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Syrian forces enter IS-held Tabqa airport; shelling damages dam

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BEIRUT: Fighters from the Syrian Democratic Forces, a US-backed Kurdish-Arab alliance, on Sunday entered an military airport held by the IS group in northern Syria, a spokesman said. “The SDF has taken control of more than 50 percent of Tabqa military airport. Fighting is ongoing inside the airport and its surroundings and full control of the airport is expected within the next few hours,” Talal Sello said. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitor said IS forces had withdrawn from the airbase under heavy artillery fire and US-led coalition air strikes.


The IS group has held the military airport since August 2014, and it carried out one of its worst mass killings there, of some 200 government soldiers. The SDF is pressing an assault on the town of Tabqa, in preparation for an attack on IS’s de facto Syrian capital Raqa city. Raqa lies around 55 kilometres to the east of Tabqa and is one of IS’s last remaining strongholds in Syria. The militant group is under pressure on several fronts, with government forces backed by Russia attacking it elsewhere, along with rebel fighters supported by Turkish firepower.


The group has warned that the Tabqa dam, which a US-backed Kurdish and Arab militia is trying to capture from the militants, is at imminent risk of collapse because of air strikes and increased water levels. It also said in messages carried on its social media channels that the dam’s operations had been put out of service and that all flood gates were closed. The dam, on the Euphrates about 40 km upstream from IS’s stronghold of Raqqa, is the largest in Syria. — Reuters


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