U.S.-backed fighters win tacit Turkish support in new offensive against IS

PanARMENIAN.Net - U.S.-backed Syrian fighters in a major new offensive against Islamic State vowed on Thursday, June 2 to cut off the last remaining access route to the outside world for the self-proclaimed caliphate, and won vital, if tacit, backing from Turkey, Reuters reports.

The assault around the Syrian city of Manbij, backed by U.S.-led coalition air strikes and a contingent of American special forces, aims to cut off Islamic State's last 80 km stretch of the Syrian-Turkish frontier by seizing territory in northern Syria west of the Euphrates River.

If successful, that would achieve a long-standing aim of Washington and amount to one of the biggest strategic defeats inflicted on Islamic State since it proclaimed its rule over all Muslims from territory in Iraq and Syria two years ago.

"We confirm that this campaign will continue until the liberation of the last inch of the land of Manbij and its rural areas," said a statement read out on the banks of the Euphrates by Adnan Abu Amjad, a commander of a group called the Manbij Military Council, allied to the U.S.-backed Syria Democratic Forces.

"Oh brave people of Manbij, our forces are coming to liberate you from the shackles of the Daesh terrorist torturers," said the statement, using an acronym for Islamic State also known as ISIS or ISIL.

Washington has been leading an international campaign of air strikes against Islamic State for two years in both Syria and Iraq. It has long been in search of reliable allies on the ground in Syria, where it also opposes the government of President Bashar al-Assad in a multi-sided civil war that has ground on for five years.

The SDF, set up last year, includes a powerful Syrian Kurdish militia and what Washington says are growing numbers of Arab forces that have been persuaded to join it. It has swept into villages west of the Euphrates since launching its offensive on Tuesday.

That advance comes as Iraqi army forces have separately begun an assault on the Iraqi city of Falluja, 750 km down the Euphrates at the opposite end of Islamic State's sprawling caliphate.

The Iraqi troops held their positions without advancing for a third straight day on Thursday, after pouring into the besieged city's southern outskirts on Monday. A Reuters reporting team in Saqlawiya, a village near Falluja, saw Iraqi Shi'ite militia fighters in control of a complex of well-fortified trenches and tunnels captured from Islamic State.

In other separate campaigns, Iraqi Kurds have also been advancing in villages near the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, and Russian-backed forces of the Syrian government have fought Islamic State in other parts of Syria. The fighting amounts to some of the biggest pushes against the militants by their disparate enemies across a variety of fronts.