Syria rebels seize Daesh-held airbase

beirut — A US-backed Syrian alliance of Kurdish and Arab militias on Sunday took a military airport in northern Syria held by Daesh, close to the country’s largest dam that may be in danger of collapse.

The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), an alliance of Kurdish and Arab militias supported by a USled international coalition, said in a statement it had seized the air base.

Earlier, SDF spokesman Talal Silo said its fighters had seized “60 to 70 per cent” of the airport but were still engaged in intense clashes with the hardliners inside the air base and on its outskirts.

The SDF, backed by US special forces in a campaign that has driven Daesh from large swathes of northern Syria, fights separately from other rebel groups that seek to topple President Bashar Al Assad’s rule.

The SDF has been battling the militants near the Tabqa dam and air base west of the Syrian city of Raqa in an accelerating campaign to capture Daesh’s stronghold. Hundreds of families were fleeing the city of Tabqa to the relative

The capture of the dam is being conducted slowly and carefully and this is why the liberation of the dam needs more time Talal Silo, SDF spokesman

safety of outlying areas as US-led coalition air strikes intensified in the past few days, according to former residents in touch with relatives. The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which monitors the war in Syria, said a week-long campaign of US-led strikes on Tabqa and the western countryside of Raqa province had killed at least 90 civilians, a quarter of them children, while injuring dozens.

A media representative for the US-led coalition fighting Daesh said it was looking into the Observatory’s assertion. Last week, the Pentagon said there were no indications a US-led coalition air strike near Raqa had hit civilians, in response to an Observatory statement that at least 33 people were killed in a strike that hit a school sheltering displaced people near the city. The Pentagon added it would carry out further investigations.

An SDF spokesman denied that coalition strikes hit the structure of the dam and said the air drop landing last week was conducted to prevent any damage to the main structure by engaging the militants away from the dam. “The capture of the dam is being conducted slowly and carefully and this is why the liberation of the dam needs more time,” Silo said, adding that militants dug inside the dam knowing they would not be hit for fear of damaging the dam.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said it had also learned that the dam had stopped functioning but that Daesh remained in control of its main operational buildings. —