SDF take control of Syria’s largest oil field
ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) have taken Deir ez-Zor’s Omar oil field from ISIS, the force announced on Sunday.
After a large-scale military operation, the SDF ousted ISIS from the oil field “with little damage,” said Laila al-Abdullah, spokesperson for the SDF’s campaign in Deir ez-Zor.
Omar oil field is located on the shore of the Euphrates River, near Mayadin, which is under Syrian regime control.
The SDF is now clashing with ISIS fighters holed up in the oil field’s nearby employee housing complex, she added.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights had reported on Friday that regime forces were advancing on the oil field, Syria’s largest, and that ISIS had withdrawn from the oil field after heavily mining it.
The Syrian army, with its allied militias and Russian and Iranian backing, and the US-backed SDF are carrying out simultaneous offensives in Deir ez-Zor. Their forces are separated by the Euphrates River, which bisects the province, as they both fight to defeat ISIS and gain control of the resource-rich province that borders Iraq.
Russia and the US have a deconfliction line, thought the two sides have come occasionally come into conflict.
As they lost their grip on the urban centres in Iraq and Syria, namely Mosul and Raqqa, ISIS militants regrouped in the Middle Euphrates River Valley that stretches between Deir ez-Zor and across the border into Iraq’s Anbar province.
In September, the SDF claimed it had captured Syria’s largest gas field, Koniko, in Deir ez-Zor.
After a large-scale military operation, the SDF ousted ISIS from the oil field “with little damage,” said Laila al-Abdullah, spokesperson for the SDF’s campaign in Deir ez-Zor.
Omar oil field is located on the shore of the Euphrates River, near Mayadin, which is under Syrian regime control.
The SDF is now clashing with ISIS fighters holed up in the oil field’s nearby employee housing complex, she added.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights had reported on Friday that regime forces were advancing on the oil field, Syria’s largest, and that ISIS had withdrawn from the oil field after heavily mining it.
The Syrian army, with its allied militias and Russian and Iranian backing, and the US-backed SDF are carrying out simultaneous offensives in Deir ez-Zor. Their forces are separated by the Euphrates River, which bisects the province, as they both fight to defeat ISIS and gain control of the resource-rich province that borders Iraq.
Russia and the US have a deconfliction line, thought the two sides have come occasionally come into conflict.
As they lost their grip on the urban centres in Iraq and Syria, namely Mosul and Raqqa, ISIS militants regrouped in the Middle Euphrates River Valley that stretches between Deir ez-Zor and across the border into Iraq’s Anbar province.
In September, the SDF claimed it had captured Syria’s largest gas field, Koniko, in Deir ez-Zor.