Immediately after the overthrow of Bashar al-Assadʼs regime in Syria, the Turkish-backed Syrian National Army, or SNA, attacked the city of Manbij in northern Syria. It was controlled by US-backed and Kurdish- led forces.
The Turkish agency Anadolu, Voice of America (VOA) and Reuters write about it.
The Syrian National Army engaged the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). The latter said that the Turkish military shelled several administrative buildings in Manbij. Turkey considers SDF a terrorist organization and therefore supports the rebel organizations in their attempts to expel the Kurdish-led forces from the area.
A reporter of the VOAʼs Kurdish service in northern Syria said that after hours of fighting between the two sides, some Turkish-backed groups have retreated from Manbij, while others remain outside the city. At the same time, Anadolu reporters say that the Syrian National Army has taken control of the town of Uraymeh in the west of Manbij and the village of Umm Dadat in the north and has begun to control the area.
Liveuamap
Changes on the map confirm that the Syrian National Army controls the city.
Manbij, located in Aleppo province, has been under the control of the US-backed SDF since it was liberated from Islamic State militants in 2016.
What preceded
Since November 27, active clashes between rebels and Syrian troops continued in Syria. The offensive was launched by the Syrian Revolutionary Forces in "response to months of continuous attacks on civilians" by the Assad regime in Aleppo province.
Already on December 1, the media wrote that the Assadʼs Forces lost control over Aleppo — for the first time since the beginning of the military conflict that began more than ten years ago, and later over the city of Hama — the fifth largest city in the country.
On December 8, the Syrian opposition entered the capital of Syria — Damascus — and declared that it had overthrown the regime of President Bashar al-Assad. Russian propagandists say that Assad fled to Moscow.
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