US-backed forces uncover trove of IS documents in northeast Syria

The US army has recovered "massive amounts" of Islamic State group intelligence in Syria, a military official said late on Wednesday.

More than 10,000 documents, including information found on laptops, notebooks and textbooks has been recovered and is now actively being used in the fight against IS, the military said.

The documents were gathered as IS was forced to retreat from vast swathes of the Syrian town of Manbij, where fighters from the Syrian Democratic Forces - an anti-IS alliance of Syrian Kurds and other Syrian factions - have been battling the militants for months with the help of air strikes launched by the US-led anti-IS coalition.

"We think this is a big deal," Colonel Christopher Garver, a spokesman for Operation Inherent Resolve against IS, said. He was speaking to reporters in the US via video link from Baghdad.  

"We're learning about how they ran Manbij as a strategic hub," Garver said. "As [a] foreign fighter would enter, they would screen them, figure out what languages they speak, assign them a job - and then send them down into wherever they were going to go, be it into Syria or Iraq, somewhere.”

However, no information about attacks in Europe has as yet been unearthed, Garver stressed.

"It is a lot of material: it is going to take a lot to go through, then start connecting the dots and trying to figure where we can start dismantling ISIS," Garver said, using another acronym for IS.

The fight to fully retake Manbij is onging, with IS still clinging on to a part of the town despite heavy US airstrikes. In the past few weeks, the US-led coalition has carried out more than 520 airstrikes in the area.

UK-based monitoring group Airwars has accused the US of killing between 74 to as many as 203 civilians in a single strike last week. The US has called the information “credible enough” to warrant an investigation, and has launched a probe into the matter. However, military authorities stress that no more than 15 civilians could have been killed in the strike. 

MEE contributor Wladimir Van Wilgenburg, currently based in Qamishli at the Syria-Turkey border, has been following the nearly six-week offensive, which aims to cut off a vital IS supply route.

"There are lots of casualties on both sides. IS is really fighting back very heavily. That's why this battle is so difficult," he said on 8 July.

As fighting continues, Van Wilgenburg said Syrian Kurds, who receive military but not humanitarian support from Western governments, may struggle to help the displaced residents with camps already in very bad conditions, without enough food or water.