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Mohammad Amen Qurabi / Anadolu Agency / Getty Images
After a two-year siege, Al-Qaeda affiliate Jabhat Al-Nusra and other insurgents on Wednesday captured the one remaining Syrian army air base in Idlib province — a development that activists said effectively expelled the last of President Bashar al-Assad's forces from the province, in the country's northwest.
It was the latest in a series of setbacks for Assad in Syria's bitter civil war, now in its fifth year. He has acknowledged the losses, saying the army has had to relinquish some areas in the north to be able to better defend core areas seen as more critical to the government.
A state television report said that the army pulled out from the Abu Zuhour air base and that the troops "evacuated their positions and moved to another" location.
Idlib is the second of Syria's 14 provinces to completely fall out of Syrian army control. Earlier this year, armed groups captured the provincial capital, also called Idlib, as well as other towns and villages.
The province of Raqqa fell to fighters from the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) last year, after it captured the provincial capital, also called Raqqa, in January 2014. The group has since declared the city the seat of its caliphate, which spans a third of Syria and Iraq.
Jabhat Al-Nusra (the Nusra Front), a top rival of ISIL, and other insurgents now control nearly all of Idlib province, except for the predominantly Shia villages of Foua and Kfarya, which government supporters hold.
Syrian state TV quoted an unnamed military official as saying that troops pulled out of the Idlib base with weapons and that none of the equipment and warplanes left behind "were usable."
The military official said the attack on the base was carried out by "terrorist groups receiving support from Erdogan's government," referring to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who is a strong supporter of Syrian opposition groups. The Syrian government refers to all groups fighting Assad's forces as terrorists.
Al Jazeera spoke to a source with knowledge of Jabhat Al-Nusra's operations, who said the group took advantage of an ongoing sandstorm in the region to advance on the base.
"The regime couldn't shell around the area because their planes could not shell accurately and they couldn't see," the source said. "Nusra took advantage of that situation and took control of large parts of the airport." The source added that not all government forces have withdrawn and that clashes were continuing.
Jabhat Al-Nusra is part of a coalition of insurgent groups called the Fattah Army, which has captured most of Idlib.
An activist group, the local Coordination Committees, posted a photo on its Facebook page saying it showed Jabhat Al-Nusra fighters standing in front of warplanes at the base. Rami Abdurrahman, who heads the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said armed men were aided by the sandstorm, which engulfed much of the area and reduced visibility.
The capture of the air base increases pressure on nearby government-held coastal areas.
Syria's conflict has killed more than 250,000 people since March 2011, when Arab Spring–inspired protests against Assad's rule erupted in the country's south. The protests turned into an insurgency and civil war after a brutal military crackdown on the protests.
This summer the conflict triggered a massive exodus of Syrian refugees beyond neighboring Middle East countries, which have so far taken the bulk of people fleeing Syria's war. Displaced people are now streaming into Europe, in numbers unseen since World War II.
Al Jazeera and wire services
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