Syria says Islamic State extremists abducted hundreds of workers near Damascus

Reporting from Dubai, United Arab Emirates —  Hundreds of Syrian civilians were kidnapped during a days-long offensive by Islamic State extremists on a town outside the capital, Damascus, state media said Thursday.

The abductions appeared to be in retaliation for losses suffered in recent weeks by the group in other parts of the country.

More than 300 workers and contractors were taken from the dormitory of Al Badia Cement outside the town of Dumair, about 42 miles northeast of Damascus, the state-run Syria Arab News Agency reported.

Residents of Jeeroud, an area close to the cement factory, had seen Islamic State vehicles transporting about 125 workers toward areas of the Eastern Ghouta region controlled by Islamic State, local official Nadim Kreizan told the news agency. He did not elaborate on the fate of the other workers kidnapped.

An activist with the pro-opposition Dumair Coordination Committee who used the nom de guerre Abu Mohammad for security reasons said the workers had been taken by Islamic State.

“The Daesh fighters entered the factory, saw the workers in front of them and took them,” he said in an interview via Skype from Dumair. He referred to Islamic State by its Arabic acronym, considered to be a pejorative by the group’s members.

“We estimate they took more than 400 people, and some ran away to the mountains and were then picked up by Jaish al Islam,” he said.

Jaish al Islam is a powerful opposition faction that controls Eastern Ghouta. Its head, Mohammed Alloush, is a member of the Saudi-based opposition group High Negotiations Committee, which has participated in talks aimed at ending the Syrian civil war, now in its sixth year. It is also pitted against Islamic State despite the fact that both groups fight government forces.

The Facebook profiles of several Al Badia company employees indicated their colleagues had been kidnapped earlier in the week despite the government’s release of the information Thursday.

The area around Dumair has been the site of fierce clashes between pro-government forces and Islamic State.

Last week, Islamic State extremists launched a wide-scale offensive on government targets east of Damascus, a strategic area that is home to large-scale industrial projects as well as a number of military installations.

Video uploaded Thursday by Aamaq, a broadcaster affiliated with Islamic State, showed the group’s fighters firing “technicals,” pickup trucks equipped with heavy machine guns, near what they said was the Tishreen power plant, about 21 miles east of Damascus. A video from a day earlier depicted fighters walking past abandoned construction machinery and government checkpoints now adorned with the extremist group’s black flags.

The attacks came after a string of major losses for the extremist group. In March, Syrian army units backed by militiamen and air cover by Russian and Syrian warplanes took back the ancient city of Palmyra and other Islamic State-held towns in the central province of Homs.

Bulos is a special correspondent.

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