AFP/Damascus
At least 24 jihadists have been killed and 150 wounded in clashes with Syrian troops defending an air base in Raqa province, a monitoring group said yesterday.
The clashes came as the Islamic State group launched a new bid to capture the Tabqa base, the government’s last bastion in the northern province, the rest of which is in the hands of the jihadists.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the attack began overnight when a suicide bomber blew himself up at the entrance to the base, prompting clashes that killed 14 IS fighters.
The two sides exchanged rocket, artillery and heavy machinegun fire, and the army deployed air strikes against the attacking jihadists, the Britain-based group said.
The air raids continued into the morning, with eight strikes against the town of Tabqa that killed 13 people, among them an additional 10 IS fighters.
Those deaths brought IS losses since it began its assault on Tabqa to at least 94, with more than 400 wounded, according to the Observatory.
IS has brought in reinforcements from other areas it controls in Syria, as well as neighbouring Iraq, the Observatory added.
The assault on Tabqa comes after IS seized the army’s Brigade 93 and Division 17 posts in Raqa, killing dozens of soldiers, some of whom it beheaded.
The army has airlifted reinforcements to the base and stepped up air strikes against IS positions across Raqa, using both precision rockets and barrel bombs.
Yesterday afternoon, Syrian state television broadcast images from Tabqa showing soldiers it said were “ready to repel any new attack”.
It also showed the bodies of what it said were “terrorist mercenaries of the Islamic State”.
l Two Italian aid workers who went missing in Syria this month are probably not in the hands of Islamic State jihadists, an Italian official was quoted as saying yesterday.
“As far as we know, the revelations by the Guardian are not true,” said foreign ministry undersecretary Mario Giro.
Britain’s Guardian newspaper reported on Wednesday that Islamic State fighters had kidnapped four foreigners near the northern city of Aleppo: two Italian women, a Dane and a Japanese national. It said they had all been taken to Raqa.
Italy had announced on August 6 that Vanessa Marzullo, 21, and Greta Ramelli, 20, of the aid group Horryaty had been abducted by gunmen in a village near Aleppo.
A man inspects damage at the entrance of the National Hospital of Tabqa, caused by what activists said was an air strike by Syrian regime forces yeste
