[An Nahar] Tens of thousands of civilians are trapped inside the northern Syrian city of Manbij after US-backed fighters surrounded the Islamic State
...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allah around with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not really Moslems....
group stronghold, a monitor said Saturday.
The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) encircled Manbij on Friday, severing IS's principal supply route between The Sick Man of Europe Turkey
...the only place on the face of the earth that misses the Ottoman Empire....
and its de facto Syrian capital, Raqa.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a British-based monitor, said warplanes from a US-led coalition were conducting heavy bombing raids on Manbij.
"Tens of thousands of civilians who are still there can't leave as all the routes out of the city are cut," Observatory head Rami Abdel Rahman told AFP.
The US envoy to the anti-IS coalition backing the SDF, Brett McGurk, said the surrounding of Manbij had severed an important route for IS fighters.
"ISIS snuffies now completely surrounded with no way out," he wrote on Twitter, using another name for IS.
The city has been held by IS since 2014 and the Observatory said that thousands of inhabitants had recently fled Manbij as air strikes intensified.
"Bakeries in the town haven't been open since Friday and food is beginning to become rare," Abdel Rahman said.
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