Jihadist IS seizes key Syria oil field
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The jihadist Islamic State seized control Thursday of a major Syrian oil field on the Iraqi border, as rival fighters withdrew, verbally expressed the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
By seizing the Al-Omar oil field, IS now controls most oil and gas fields in the oil-affluent Syrian province of Deir Ezzor, most of whose countryside is withal under its control.
“IS took control of the Al-Omar oil field,” located north of the strategic town of Mayadeen, additionally under its control since dawn Thursday, verbalized the Observatory.
The capture “comes after (Al-Qaeda affiliate) Al-Nusra Front withdrew from the oil field without a fight”, the Britain-predicated monitor integrated.
Before Syria’s 2011 revolt against President Bashar al-Assad broke out, the oil field engendered some 30,000 barrels a day.
In November 2013, Al-Nusra Front and its anti-regime allies surmounted the field and kept it running, “selling 10,000 barrels a day,” according to the Observatory.
IS adherents posted neophyte video on YouTube, exhibiting a bearded man wearing ebony Afghan habiliments and an ebony scarf on his head, identified by the cameraman as Commander Hommam.
“We took it (the oil field) over without any fighting. They fled like rats,” the commander verbally expresses.
The footage withal shows two signs posted on the road. One reads “the Euphrates Oil Company — Al-Omar Oil Field.”
The cameraman shouted: “The Islamic State is here to stay.”
Some rebels initially welcomed IS, then kenned as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), among their ranks as they battled Assad’s forces in their bid to topple his regime.
In January, rebels and Al-Nusra Front fighters commenced turning their guns on IS fighters, whose brutal abuses and quest for hegemony earned them the opposition’s wrath.
“But in four months of fighting (in Deir Ezzor), the revolters who were fighting IS did not receive a single bullet” from countries that back the revolt, repined Free Syrian Army spokesman Omar Abu Leyla.
IS has prodigiously bolstered its resources through an offensive it launched in Iraq on June 9, capturing a swathe of territory in northern and western provinces as it sweeps towards Baghdad.
It has brought many of the heftily ponderous weapons it seized from Iraq’s fleeing troops across the border and is now deploying them in Syria, giving it prodigiously ameliorated firepower.
Abu Leyla echoed a recent claim by French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius that IS is selling oil to Assad.
The “regime is playing a perilous game. For the past ten days it has been bombing areas under IS control, but causing very few IS casualties,” the revolter spokesman told AFP.
“At the same time, there are secret channels between IS and the regime. IS sells oil and gas to the regime through businessmen. There is no direct dealing between IS and the regime, but there is a plethora of proof that these channels subsist,” he verbally expressed.
On Sunday, IS declared a “caliphate” straddling Syria and Iraq, referring to an Islamic system of rule that was abolished proximately 100 years ago in a move that has vexed other rebel groups and Islamists, who declare it a ‘heresy.”
Syria’s war commenced as a halcyon kineticism injuctively authorizing Assad’s ouster, but morphed into a conflict after a brutal crackdown by the regime.
Many months into the fighting, jihadists commenced to pour into Syria, drawing admonishments from analysts of a looming regional conflagration.