AFP, Beirut :
Arab-Kurdish fighters backed by the United States on Friday cut the Islamic State group’s main supply route between Syria and Turkey, a monitor said, in a major setback for the jihadists.
Near Damascus, a food aid convoy entered the town of Daraya in the first such delivery since the start of a regime siege in 2012.
IS has been under pressure on various fronts in Syria and Iraq, where it established its self-declared “caliphate” in 2014, and the extremists lost control Friday of a vital supply artery when Arab-Kurdish forces surrounded a key jihadist-held town. “The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) cut off the last road from Manbij to the Turkish border,” the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
IS still controls territory along the Turkish border with secondary roads to the frontier but these are more dangerous and difficult to access, Observatory head Rami Abdel Rahman said.
This week the SDF, backed by air strikes by a US-led coalition, cut the road north out of Manbij to the IS-held border town of Jarabulus, which the jihadists had used as a transit point for fighters, money and weapons.
The SDF also blocked the road south out of Manbij heading to IS’s de facto capital of Raqa.
“For the jihadists to reach the Turkish border from Raqa, they now have to take a route that is more dangerous because of regime troops nearby and Russian air strikes,” Abdel Rahman said.
Russia launched air strikes in support of President Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria in September. Thousands of residents have fled Manbij — held by IS since 2014 — but jihadists who evacuated their families stayed to defend the town, the Observatory said.
About 20,000 people are still living in the town, which had a pre-war population of about 120,000 — mostly Arabs, but about a quarter Syrian Kurds.
Syria’s war has killed more than 280,000 people and displaced millions since it started in 2011 with the brutal repression of anti-government protests.
Meanwhile, the Syrian Arab Red Crescent (SARC) and the UN have delivered food aid to the Damascus suburb of Daraya for the first time since it came under siege in 2012. The drop late on Thursday came hours after the UN said the Syrian government had permitted access to 15 of the 19 besieged areas within the war-ravaged country.
The rebel-held suburb of Daraya, southwest of the Syrian capital, has been under siege since November 2012 and has witnessed some of the worst bombardment during Syria’s civil war, now in its sixth year.
The delivery of food supplies came a week after a joint convoy of the UN, the International Committee of the Red Cross and SARC reached Daraya and delivered medicine, vaccines, baby formula, and “nutritional items for children” but no food. Can the world provide Syrians with aid from above?
The UN estimates that there are currently 592,700 people living under siege in Syria, with the vast majority of them – some 452,700 people – besieged by government forces.
Lifting the siege on rebel-held areas was a key demand by the opposition during indirect peace talks held in Geneva earlier this year.
SARC said the delivery – which included food, flour and medical supplies – was coordinated with the UN in the Syrian capital.
