While the international anti-jihadist coalition led by the United States confirmed Tuesday that it had left Manbij, President Bashar al-Assad's forces took control of this strategic city in northern Syria and Russian troops were patrolling the area.

Manbij is located on the border of the "safe zone" that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan intends to create in Syrian territory, along the border, in favor of his offensive launched on October 9. Among the 2,000 US troops stationed in Syria as of 2016, several hundred were stationed in three bases in the Manbij region, which also hosted US Special Forces troops.

Several videos published Tuesday on social networks by Oleg Blokhin, a Russian war reporter embarked with the Russian army show inside a base abandoned by US troops around Manbij. "We are in the US base in Manbij and yesterday morning they were still here and we are here today," he said in one of the videos, relayed by The Washington Post and verified by the Storyful site, specialized in checking content posted on social networks.

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A publication shared by Олег Блохин (@ blokhin35) on Oct. 15, 2019 at 10:17 PDT

In a publication, Oleg Blokhin films the inside of a base installation in which one can see personal items and abandoned American footballs on the spot.

"The number of Russians is very, very limited"

Quoted by Reuters, a senior US official has put the Russian presence in perspective in Manbij. "The number of Russians is very, very limited," "I would not even say hundreds at this point," he told reporters in Washington on condition of anonymity. "But just a handful of Russians with a big Russian flag to attract attention," he quipped.

The official assured that Russian and US military had "successfully" communicated through their usual channel of "deconfliction" in Syria to avoid incidents during movements around this key city. For his part, the Russian special envoy for Syria, Alexander Lavrentiev, explained that Moscow would not allow clashes between the Turkish and Syrian armies.

The arrival of Syrian government forces in Manbij, controlled since July 2018 by a military council composed of Arab and Kurdish fighters, is a first since 2012.

According to the Russian Ministry of Defense, the Syrian army completely controls the town 30 kilometers from the Turkish border. Patrols of the Russian military police move along the "line of contact" separating the Syrian and Turkish armies, adds the ministry, quoted by the Interfax news agency. According to Moscow, this deployment aims to counter the Turkish offensive, so to avoid Turkish-Syrian clashes, while Ankara had Manbij in the viewfinder as part of his campaign against the Kurdish militia of the People's Protection Units (YPG).

With AFP and Reuters