ISIL accused of kidnapping 300 Syrian factory workers

It comes as the UN special envoy for Syria said the next round of peace talks in Geneva was expected to start next week, around April 13 - delaying them by two days.

This image made from video published online by Amaq News Agency of the ISIL group shows a cement factory where in a brazen assault near the Syrian capital. The extremist group snatched up to 300 cemenShow more

Damascus // In a brazen assault near the Syrian capital, ISIL militants on Thursday abducted 300 cement workers and contractors in an area northeast of Damascus, Syrian state TV reported as fighting elsewhere in the country also worsened.

Meanwhile, the UN special envoy for Syria said the next round of peace talks in Geneva was expected to start next week, around April 13 - delaying them by two days. Staffan de Mistura said the new round should focus on a political process that he hoped would lead to a “concrete or real beginning of a political transition”.

Syria’s official news agency Sana said the 300 people seized by ISIL were employees of Al Badia cement factory in Dumeir, an area where militants launched a surprise attack against government forces earlier this week.

“The company has informed the industry ministry that it hasn’t been able to make contact with the kidnapped individuals,” Sana said.

The extremist group, which controls parts of Syria and Iraq, has a history of mass abductions and killings.

Residents of Dmeir, around 50 kilometres from Damascus, earlier reported that at least 250 workers at the plant had been missing since Monday.

The town is divided between ISIL control in the east and rebel control in the west, but several key positions around it, including a military airport and a power plant, are still in government hands.

ISIL attacked the town of Dumeir, east of Damascus, after suffering a series of territorial losses at the hands of regime troops in recent weeks, including in the ancient city of Palmyra.

In another setback for the extremists, anti-government rebels were reported to have seized their main supply route to Turkey on Thursday.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based monitor, said the fighting in and around Dumeir was heavy but the jihadists had not managed to gain significant ground.

“The most violent clashes are near the airport and the power plant, but ISIL has not entered either yet,” Observatory director Rami Abdel Rahman said.

He said 20 members of regime forces and 35 ISIL fighters had been killed in the clashes.

A Dumeir resident said on Thursday she could hear heavy shelling around the city and that residents were not daring to leave their homes.

“We have no electricity, we have no water. There are people fleeing from the eastern districts to the west,” she said, asking not to be named out of fear for her safety.

Further north on the border with Turkey, rebel factions took control of a border crossing in the town of Al-Rai after clashes with ISIL, according to the Observatory.

“This is the main and one of the last crossing points with Turkey,” the monitor said.

Residents of battle-scarred Palmyra were meanwhile preparing to start returning to the city on Saturday after its recapture from the extremists, officials said.

Most of Palmyra’s pre-war population of 70,000 people fled west towards the city of Homs when the extremist group advanced on the city in May 2015.

Authorities this week began restoring power lines in the city and repairs to housing began on Wednesday, provincial governor Talal Barazi told the state news agency.

More than 270,000 people have been killed and millions have fled their homes since Syria’s conflict erupted in March 2011.

The United Nations said Thursday it was aiming to begin a large-scale evacuation of wounded and sick people from four besieged Syrian towns within the next week.

Jan Egeland, who heads a UN-backed humanitarian taskforce for Syria, said “a very major” medical evacuation was planned for Madaya and Zabadani, two towns near Damascus blockaded by the regime and their allies, and Fuaa and Kafraya, besieged by rebels in Syria’s northwest.

“All together it could be up to 500 people,” he said.

* Agence France-Presse and Associated Press