Islamic State fighters capture military base in Syria, behead soldiers
Militants with the Al Qaeda breakaway group Islamic State seized control of a military base in northern Syria late Thursday night, beheading dozens of soldiers and displaying their headless bodies, activists said.
It is only the latest victory for the extremist group that has made rapid advances in both Iraq and Syria in recent months as it pursues its goal of creating an Islamic caliphate.
There have been sporadic skirmishes around the base, called Division 17, in Raqqa province for months, but on Wednesday Islamic State fighters launched a concerted offensive. The fighting began when two militants blew themselves up in with suicide car bombs near the base’s chemistry battalion, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a pro-opposition watchdog group based in Britain.
Within a day the militants had taken over the base and begun carting off light and heavy weaponry, said Abu Muhammad, an activist with the Masar Press Agency.
http://www.latimes.com/world/middleeast/la-fg-islamic-state-military-base-syria-20140725-story.html
