hanuise From France, joined Jun 2005, 17 posts, RR: 0 Posted (5 months 3 weeks 4 days 4 hours ago) and read 995 times:
From Reuters:
The Syrian rebels drew mortar shells in the afternoon at the runways of the international airport of Damascus and they cut the road leading to the capital, declared one of their combatants. A man of brigades Jund Allah liking to be called Abou Omar said that his combatants were within the airport but that they blocked access and exits. ' Nobody can enter or go out of the airport ', he said, by maintaining that lanes had been harmed. He added that two other Islamic organizations hostile to the regime of Bachar el Assad participated in these battles. His version of facts could not be proved to independent sources.
kaitak From Ireland, joined Aug 1999, 11956 posts, RR: 37 Reply 1, posted (5 months 3 weeks 4 days 3 hours ago) and read 879 times:
Details are sketchy at the moment because the fighting is getting very close to DAM (it's getting DAMn close!) and it's probably too dangerous for journalists to be there; losing DAM would be a very important psychological loss to the government (not least because they lose their exit route) and correspondingly, a major boost to the rebels. You can expect the fighting there to be pretty vicious and you can expect it to be heavily shelled, so goodbye pretty much the whole RB fleet and anything else that's there. MS and EK stopped flying there today and I would imagine that there will be no other operations.
In addition to being the country's main international gateway, DAM is also home to a Syrian AF base; you can see hard shelters for fighter jets near the 23L threshold. There are also IL76s (probably operated by Syrianair for the air force) on an apron near the 5R threshold:
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