U.S.-backed troops pause action for dam inspection
BEIRUT — U.S.backed forces in northern Syria paused military operations near a dam held by the Islamic State group on Monday to allow engineers to fix any problems after conflicting reports about its stability.
The decision by the Syrian Democratic Forces came a day after contradictory reports over whether civilians had begun evacuating the nearby city of Raqqa — the extremists’ de facto capital — due to concerns about the Tabqa dam on the Euphrates River.
Some activist groups opposed to the Islamic State group have said residents are seeking higher ground, fearing the collapse of the dam could cause severe flooding, while others said people were remaining in place. Conflicting reports are common in areas controlled by Islamic State, which bans independent media.
The SDF, a U.S.-backed and Kurdish-led force, has been fighting the militants in the area since Friday in an attempt to capture the dam, one of the main sources of electricity in northern Syria.
The SDF said in a statement that the cease-fire expired at 5 p.m. local time, after their engineers inspected the structure and found no faults. Photos credited to an embedded freelance journalist indicated they had just inspected the dam’s spillway, which is on SDF-controled territory. The main dam structure and the gates lie 2.5 miles away and are still held by militants.
The SDF said the request for a cease-fire was made by the dam’s administrators, without specifying whether they were part of the Syrian government or Islamic State, which operates a quasistate in the areas under its control.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said technicians inside Islamic State-held Tabqa did not reach the dam during the cease-fire, to reactivate its main power controls. There was no explanation given.
The engineer Ahmad Farhat, who oversaw the mechanical administration of the dam, said it is “equipped with the necessary precautions for its own protection,” but there needs to be technical personnel on site to engage them. He spoke with the Associated Press from the rebel-held northwestern Syrian province of Idlib.
Engineer Aboud al Haj Aboud, who was the head of the electricity division of the dam, said on social media that if indeed the control room is malfunctioning and the gates of the dam cannot be opened, it will still take at least a month for the waters being held back by the dam to overflow the top of the structure.
The U.S.-led coalition said it is taking every precaution to ensure the integrity of the dam. “To our knowledge, the dam has not been structurally damaged,” it said on its Twitter account.