BEIRUT // US-backed Syrian forces said on Sunday they had established a military council to push ISIL fighters out of their northern bastion of Al Bab, two days after ousting the extremists from Manbij.
“We announce … the creation of the Al Bab military council” tasked with driving ISIL from the town in Aleppo province, said the Syrian Democratic Forces alliance of Kurdish and Arab fighters.
“We promise to our people that we will strike to liberate Al Bab” and the region around it.
The last remaining ISIL fighters abandoned the city of Manbij near the Turkish border on Friday after an offensive that the Pentagon said showed the extremists were “on the ropes”.
The extremists’ defeat at Manbij, which they captured in 2014, was their worst yet at the hands of the SDF alliance backed by US air power.
The group took some 2,000 civilians as they fled the city to serve as human shields. Hundreds were released on Saturday but the SDF said the fate of many remained unclear.
Al Bab is around 50 kilometres south-west of Manbij, and also in the battleground province of Aleppo.
Also on Sunday, a monitoring group said Syrian and Russian warplanes had killed dozens in areas held by a rebel alliance battling to take control of Aleppo city.
The air strikes, which began on Saturday and continued on Sunday, killed 45 civilians in and around Aleppo and 22 in neighbouring Idlib province, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
The raids came as the Islamist Faylaq Al Sham faction, part of the Jaish Al Fatah rebel alliance, said it had begun a new offensive “to liberate” the regime-held district of Zahra on Aleppo’s western outskirts.
The Britain-based Observatory and opposition fighters said a car bomb exploded in Zahra on Sunday, but did not mention casualties.
The National
