The media bureau of Al-Bunyan Al-Marsoos (Solid Structure) military operation has announced that its forces have now gripped full control of Sirte’s Al-Gardabiya airbase, which lies only 20 km to the south of IS stronghold, Sirte.

The control of Al-Gardabiya airbase came Saturday afternoon just hours after Al-Bunyan Al-Marsoos forces announced that they had taken hold of Abuhadi Reserve, kicking IS militants out of it and leaving them easy targets for the air force backup of Al-Bunyan AL-Marsoos, which stated that it targeted IS vehicles around Al-Gardabiya’s runway 17 and in Al-Thahair town.

Relatedly, the spokesman of Al-Bunyan AL-Marsoos’s Air Force Emergency Operations Chamber, Mukhtar Fakroon, said that between April 2015 and May 2016, the operation’s warplanes carried out more than 400 air strikes on IS locations in Sirte and outlying areas.