(MENAFN- Kuwait News Agency (KUNA)) A Syrian military source on Sunday said that the Tabqa military airport, the regime's last remaining post in Raqqa governorate, has been evacuated following fierce clashes with militants of the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).
After days of internecine fighting with the insurgents, the army units that left the airport managed to regroup and are now countering the armed groups in the region causing them heavy losses, the source told the Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA).
Earlier today, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), based in London, said ISIL fighters had almost fully controlled the military airport, amid clashes with the regime forces and loyalists still on in various points in the facility.
SOHR added that most of the Syrian troops withdrew to nearby farms and an antiquity area on the Salmiya-Khanasser road.
Last night the ISIL insurgents removed a barrier on the way between the airport and the antiquities to give the army a corridor to withdraw, to avert deadly clashes inside the military facility.
Thus, Raqqa has become the first Syrian governorate under full control of ISIL except for some villages in the northeastern parts of the governorate which are controlled by the Kurdish People's Protection Units.
The clashes in the vicinity of the Tabqa airport over the past few days claimed dozens of the regime forces and loyalists, the Observatory said, not providing exact figures or the losses on the side of the insurgents.
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