The contested town of Manbij in northern Syria has become the latest flashpoint in the seven-year conflict, as its main stakeholders rush to fill the vacuum left by the announced US withdrawal. Bashar al-Assad’s forces claimed to have moved into the mainly Arab town on Friday at the invitation of US-backed, Kurdish-led forces worried about an imminent Turkish invasion.
But a spokesman for the US-led coalition fighting the Islamic State (IS) today dismissed as “incorrect information” the claim that the Syrian army had entered the city for the first time in six years. Instead, coalition sources tell Al-Monitor that regime forces were in Arima, just west of Manbij, and that they had merely increased their presence there.
