[2] The base is home to the Military Aviation Institute (originally opened in Damascus in 1947) of the Syrian Arab Air Force since 1980.

ISIS besieged the airbase for two years, deploying heavy weapons and armoured vehicles like suicide tank VBIEDs.

ISIS negotiators called up officers on the phone and urged them to surrender and shelled the base with leaflets promising safe passage, but no one defected.

[4] Twice ISIS breached the perimeter of the airbase, even reaching as far as the hardened aircraft shelters where the defenders lived, but could not capture it.

[4] Colonel Suhayl al-Hasan and his Tiger Forces finally broke the siege on 10 November 2015, as part of the Kuweires offensive.