A US-backed alliance of Kurdish and Arab fighters has seized most of a key Syrian city from so-called Islamic State (IS), activists and commanders say.
Manbij is situated at an intersection of roads just south of the Turkish border.
It has been under IS control for more than two years.
Small numbers of IS militants are still resisting, using civilians as human shields, the alliance says.
The Syria Democratic Forces (SDF), a coalition of US-backed fighters including the powerful Kurdish YPG militia, launched a campaign to retake the northern city two months ago.
They were backed by US-led air strikes on IS positions.
After some heavy fighting, Manbij was encircled and completely cut off in June.
Dozens of civilians, including 11 children, were reportedly killed in US-led air strikes in July as they fled a village near the city.
Now, says a report from the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a UK-based group that relies on updates from people inside Syria, IS is being pushed out.
An SDF commander, Adnan Abu-Amjad, said his forces were “advancing cautiously” into the city and had taken over 80% of the town. The main obstacle was that IS was using civilians as human shields.
He said the “small groups” of militants that remained had been surrounded by SDF soldiers.
Mr Abu-Amjad said that between 10,000 and 15,000 civilians were left in areas under IS control, and his forces were working to avoid any harm to civilians.
The roads in Manbij link the IS stronghold of Raqqa to some parts of the Turkish border and other areas under its control in Aleppo province.
The routes have become key to the group’s ability to move fighters, weapons and supplies in and out of Syria.
Neighbouring Aleppo, meanwhile, is currently the site of a major battle as rebel groups try to break a government siege.
Once Syria’s economic powerhouse and the country’s biggest city, Aleppo has been divided between government forces and rebels since the summer of 2012.
The government siege of opposition-held districts began on July 17 and has raised fears of a humanitarian crisis for some 300,000 people trapped in rebel-controlled areas.
According to the SOHR, at least 115 civilians, including 35 children, have been killed in the city since the fighters began an assault on Sunday to break through a strip of government-controlled territory in order to reconnect their area of control in western Syria with the encircled sector of eastern Aleppo.
The deaths include 65 people, among them 22 children, killed in opposition fire on government neighbourhoods, according to the SOHR, which gathers information from a network of activists in Syria.
Another 42 people, including 11 children, have been killed in strikes on eastern Aleppo.
It reported five more deaths in rebel fire on the Kurdish-majority Sheikh Maqsud district of the city.
The Syrian conflict began as a mostly unarmed uprising against President Bashar al-Assad in March 2011.
However, it quickly escalated into a full-blown civil war, with more than 280,000 people now estimated to have been killed in fighting between the government, the opposition and other armed groups.
Syria’s conflict first erupted in March 2011 with anti-government protests but has since evolved into a multi-front war largely dominated by jihadist groups.
U.S.-backed forces trying to oust Islamic State militants from the Syrian city of Manbij took “almost complete control” of the city on Saturday, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
The Syria Democratic Forces (SDF), which includes the powerful Kurdish YPG militia and Arab fighters, launched its campaign two months ago with the backing of U.S. special forces to drive Islamic State from a last stretch of the Syrian-Turkish frontier.
The official spokesman of the SDF-allied Manbij military council, Sharfan Darwish, told Reuters that battles were continuing but that around 90 percent of the city had now been cleared of Islamic State.
Pockets of militants are still present in the center of the city, the Britain-based Observatory said.
Activists say predominantly Kurdish fighters are now in control of most of a stronghold of the Islamic State group in northern Syria after a push under the cover of airstrikes by the U.S.-led coalition.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says Syria Democratic Forces are in control of most of the town of Manbij amid fighting in northern neighborhoods and the town’s center.
Mustafa Bali, a Syria-based Kurdish activist, said Saturday that IS still holds some areas in Manbij, including the major northwestern neighborhood of Sarab.
Bali said “it’s a matter of time” before SDF fighters capture the town.
If Manbij is captured by SDF, it will be the biggest strategic defeat for IS in Syria since July 2015, when the extremists lost the border town of Tal Abyad.
