Isis affiliate ’switches sides’ to ’hand’ SDF key oil field
US-BACKED Syrian forces seized the country’s largest oil field near the Iraqi border from Isis yesterday after the extremists allegedly switched sides, giving up the fields without a fight.
The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) — a predominantly Kurdish group which last week declared the “total liberation” of Isis’s former stronghold of Raqqa — said it had taken the al-Omar oil field northeast of Deir Ezzor in a “swift and wide military operation.”
But Lebanon’s Al-Masdar News claimed local militia who had pledged allegiance to Isis in 2014 had defected to the SDF, handing them the lucrative resource without a fight.
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