After two years living under the Islamic State, the last-remaining residents of the northern Syrian city of Manbij could not quite believe SDF liberated the city.

The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) declared the city fully liberated on Friday, saying they were “starting a new history after closing the book of darkness”.

The battle, which has displaced nearly 100,000 civilians and left more than 400 dead, proved to be the fiercest of all the offensives to dismantle the group's self-proclaimed caliphate across Syria and Iraq.

Manbij was of great strategic and symbolic importance to the terrorist and they held out to the last.

Some 25 miles from the Turkish border, it had been a hub for the smuggling of weapons and foreign recruits from Europe.

Manbij had such a large number of British ISIS fighters it had earned the nickname locally as Little London, Telegraph reports.

12