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Jihadist fighters captured a major military air base in northeastern Syria on Sunday, removing the last government-held post in a province the extremists claim as part of their new “Islamic State.”

The storming of Tabqa air field, a major government military facility containing several squadrons of planes, helicopters, tanks and artillery, is a significant victory for the Islamic State of the Iraq and the Levant (ISIS).

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“Some of the Syrian regime troops pulled out, and now the Islamic State is in full control of Tabqa,” said Rami Abdurrahman of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. “This makes Raqqa province the first to fully fall out of government hands.”

At least 500 fighters from both sides were reported to have died in the fighting over recent days, with casualties among ISIS forces said to be running twice as high as among the government troops.

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There were reports of celebratory gunfire in Raqqa, ISIS’s central stronghold in Syria, after mosques announced through their loudspeakers that the base had fallen to the Islamists. A witness told the Reuters news agency that fighters displayed the severed heads of Syrian army soldiers in the city square.