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Syrian Kurds liberate strategic airbase, several villages in N Syria

A Kurdish female fighter of the People's Protection Units (YPG) looks on at a training camp near the Syrian-Turkish border on February 13, 2015. (AFP)

Syrian Kurdish forces have managed to capture a strategic airbase and a town in the northern Aleppo province after days of fierce clashes with Takfiri terrorists.

Forces from the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG), backed by popular forces, established control over the town of Minnigh (also Menagh) and its adjacent Minnigh Air Base after expelling the occupying foreign-backed militants from the area on Wednesday night, AFP reported on Thursday, citing the so-called Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

According to the UK-based rights group, the development came after days of heavy clashes between YPG fighters and terrorists of the al-Qaeda-affiliated al-Nusra Front east of Minnigh. YPG forces first managed to liberate several villages east of Minnigh before reaching the town and freeing it in an overnight operation.

Takfiri terrorists “lost the only military airport they held in Aleppo province with the defeat at Minnigh,” the head of the rights group, Rami Abdel Rahman, said.

A fighter from the Kurdish People Protection Unit (YPG) walks between sandbags on the front line in the northeastern Syrian city of Hasakah on September 4, 2015. (AFP)

The Syrian government forces lost control of the airbase, which is on the road between Aleppo and the Turkish border, in early August 2013, when militants took it after almost a year-long siege.

The YPG has stated their desire to reestablish the link between Afrin, its stronghold in the region located some 15 kilometers (9 miles) east of Minnigh, and Kobani, another Syrian Kurdish town.

The foreign-backed conflict in Syria, which began in March 2011, has claimed the lives of more than 260,000 people and displaced almost half of the country’s population.


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