Battle over Aleppo airport heats up

Kidnapped Ukrainian journalist escapes rebels after months in captivity

AP — Syrian activists say fighting has intensified as government troops and rebels battle for control of the international airport in the northern city of Aleppo and nearby army bases.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says clashes erupted anew on Tuesday around the airport. The rebels have been trying to seize the strategic facility for weeks, overrunning checkpoints and capturing a smaller military base that provides military protection for the airport.

But President Bashar Assad’s soldiers have held on to the airport, Syria’s second largest.

The Observatory, a Britain-based group that relies on a network of activists on the ground, says the rebels have also intensified their assault on the Nairab and Mannagh air bases near the Aleppo airport, as well as on an airfield nearby known as Kweires.

On Tuesday, Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry confirmed that a Ukrainian journalist who was kidnapped in Syria is free after more than 150 days in captivity.

Ministry spokesman Yevhen Perebiynis said the reporter, Ankhar Kochneva, was expected to contact the Ukrainian embassy in Damascus later in the day.

Kochneva, who has written for Syrian and Russian newspapers, was kidnapped in western Syria on October 9 and reportedly held by members of the Free Syrian Army opposition group. Perebiynis said he had no further information on her.

The Russian newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda quoted Kochneva as saying she walked away from the house where she was held, skirted a rebel guard post and then walked about 15 kilometers (9 miles) through fields until finding a villager who helped her.

According to the newspaper, Kochneva said she was abducted near the city of Homs while riding in a taxi to Damascus.

The abductors released a video in which Kochneva said she was working as a Russian agent, but the newspaper quoted her as saying the recording was made under duress.

“They forced me to say that I came to Syria on the instruction of Russian spies. They forced me with threats. I refused at first, but they said ‘then we’ll kill you’,” she said.

Komsomolskaya Pravda characterized Kochneva’s reporting as showing “uncompromising support for Bashar Assad and the Syrian army.”