IS attack 'destroyed Syria airbase'
Satellite imagery appears to show extensive damage to an air base in Syria used by Russian forces following an attack by fighters from the Islamic State group, US intelligence company Stratfor said yesterday.
The claim was immediately denied by Russia's defence ministry which said that the damage had been there for months and was due to fighting between Syrian government forces and "militants from terror groups".
The report came as Washington and Moscow scrambled to salvage Syria's shaky ceasefire yesterday as the country reeled from jihadist bombings that killed more than 160 people in President Bashar al-Assad's coastal heartland.
The latest attempts to salvage the truce come after at least 161 people were killed in car bombings and suicide attacks on Monday in the northwestern cities of Jableh and Tartus that were claimed by the Islamic State group.
Stratfor released satellite images dated from May 14 and May 17, implying that the damage to the T-4 base, also known as Tiyas, was caused in that time.
The images suggest four helicopters and 20 lorries were destroyed by fire inside the base, which strategically located in central Syria between war-ravaged Palmyra and Homs.
"The T4 air base was severely damaged by an Islamic State artillery attack. In particular, four Russian Mi-24 attack helicopters appear to have been destroyed," Stratfor said on their website.
The cause of the apparent damage could not be determined from the images obtained by Stratfor.
But the BBC quoted Stratfor analyst Sim Tack as saying that "this was not an accidental explosion".
It "would really be a marginal, almost non-existent chance for this to be accidental," he added.
Tack said there was evidence of "several different sources of explosions across the airport, and it shows that the Russians took a quite a bad hit".
The Stratfor report said that "ordnance impact points are visible" in the images and that a Syrian MiG-25 fighter jet also appeared to have been damaged.
Russian news agency RIA Novosti quoted an unnamed Syrian source confirming a "fire" at the base, though he did not specify when it had occurred.
"The reasons of the fire are unknown. It started near the space where four helicopters were located. Fire engines could not access the fire due to shelling by terrorists. The fire spread to the helicopters," the source said, adding that there were no casualties or injuries sustained in the shelling.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights had reported shelling of the T-4 base on May 11 after IS jihadists briefly took control of part of a route between Palmyra and Homs.
On May 15, the IS-affiliated Amaq news agency said that four Russian combat helicopters and 20 trucks carrying rockets had been destroyed at the T-4 base by a fire but did not provide further details.
Monday's bombings on the Assad strongholds of Jableh and Tartus were unprecedented since the start of the conflict in 2011.
The Syrian foreign ministry blamed "the regimes of hate and extremism" in Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Turkey, the leading supporters of anti-regime rebels, for the blasts.
Jableh is in Latakia province, while Tartus is the capital of the adjacent governorate of the same name.
Both areas -- where Russia has maintained a military airport and naval facility -- have remained relatively secure, even as the war has raged in Latakia province's rural northeast and other parts of the country.
Monday's early morning attacks began at a bus station in Tartus when a car bomb exploded. As people began to flock to the site, two suicide bombers detonated explosive belts.
Around 15 minutes later, four explosions rocked Jableh further north, with a car bomb and three suicide attackers targeting a bus station, a hospital and a power station.
A police officer said a car bomb also targeted another hospital in the city.
IS is not known to have a presence in Syria's coastal provinces, where Al-Nusra is much more prominent.
IS seized control of large parts of Syria and Iraq in mid-2014, and the group has claimed deadly attacks in the West and throughout the Middle East.
Russia's intervention has significantly strengthened the Syrian government in a five-year civil war that has killed more than 270,000 people and driven millions from their homes.
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