Local official survives assassination attempt in Syria’s Manbij
ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – The spokesperson for the Manbij Military Council (MMC), Shervan Derwish, survived a bombing that was an apparent assassination attempt against him on Wednesday morning along the road between the northern Syrian city of Manbij and the nearby town of Abu Qalqal.
An improvised explosive device (IED) detonated near his vehicle, but only caused an unspecified amount of material damage. Neither Derwish nor any others are reported to have suffered injuries.
It’s not the first time that MMC officials have been targeted in such incidents. Derwish himself was injured in an attack in March 2018 but recovered just a few weeks later. A year later, his driver was targeted by an IED blast in Manbij that killed one civilian and wounded six others.
“The security situation in the city has improved greatly since SDF liberated it from ISIS (in 2016), but the city has nonetheless suffered regular attacks by Turkish-backed sleeper cells, including Ahrar-al-Sharqiya and Haraket al-Qiyam, a Turkish-linked group notorious for its brutal execution videos set to comic music and animation,” Robin Fleming, a Syria-based researcher at the Rojava Information Center, told Kurdistan 24.
“Haraket al-Qiyam previously targeted the commander of the Manbij Military Council (Abu Adel) in a similar IED attack, while ISIS have also carried out attacks in the city,” she continued.
“A bomb attack in January 2019 killed 2 US soldiers and 2 US citizens working with Coalition forces, along with around 15 locals. Whether the work of ISIS or a Turkish- controlled faction, the intention of these attacks is the same: to destroy the progress that has been made in establishing security and peaceful co-existence in the city, with locals from the Manbij Military Council working in co-ordination with the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria.”
A recent Pentagon Inspector General (IG) report covering the first quarter of 2020 (Jan. 1-Mar. 31) quoted the US Defense Intelligence Agency which stated that, since the Turkish incursion in October 2019, “ISIS clandestine cells have also focused operations in Hasakah province where Coalition forces are operating along with the SDF, Raqqa province, and in Aleppo province, which includes the SDF-controlled Manbij area.”
Manbij lies on the border between northeastern Syria and Afrin, the previously majority-Kurdish region occupied by Turkey in 2018.
The Manbij Military Council (MMC), supported by the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), liberated Manbij with US support in 2016 in one of the bloodiest campaigns Syria has witnessed against the so-called Islamic State.
However, US forces left the town and other border regions in northern Syria in October 2019 after Turkey targeted the SDF-held towns of Tal Abyad and Ras al-Ain (Serekaniye).
In a deal Moscow brokered, the SDF invited Syrian forces to border areas under their control to prevent a Turkish expansion. Since there was no political deal on the future of the SDF-held northeast, however, there are now Syrian troops based on the outskirts of Manbij.
After the US withdrawal, there has been less Islamic State activity in the vicinity.
“There have been no bombings since, but our mission to pursue ISIS sleeper cells continues,” Derwish told Kurdistan 24 in December 2019, noting instances at the time when militants from the extremist organization had been captured.
Editing by John J. Catherine