BEIRUT // ISIL militants ordered residents to evacuate the Syrian city of Raqqa on Sunday following reports that a dam upstream on the Euphrates River could collapse, activists said.
Fighting at the Tabqa dam – held by the extremist group and contested by US-backed forces – has put it out of service, risking dangerous rising water levels, a technical source at the dam said.
The militants said coalition air strikes had weakened the Tabqa Dam, some 40 kilometres west of Raqqa, and that the water level behind the dam was rising.
A Kurdish-Arab alliance known as the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) is battling to take the dam and nearby Tabqa town from ISIL before advancing on Raqqa - the capital of the group’s self-styled “caliphate”. The extremists captured the city from Syrian rebels in 2014.
Civilians began fleeing at midday, according to the activist-run Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an opposition-run monitoring group, on Sunday reported that the dam was out of service for unknown reasons.
A source at the dam said the fighting had damaged its power station, forcing a halt to operations on Sunday.
“Shelling on the area ... that supplies that dam with electricity has put it out of service,” the source said.
“The work needed to fix the problem is not possible because there is not sufficient staff available as a result of the intensive shelling in the area of the dam,” he added.
“If the problem is not fixed, it will begin to pose a danger to the dam.”
The source could not confirm what kind of shelling damaged the power station, but there has been heavy fighting nearby as well as air raids by the US-led coalition against ISIL in support of SDF fighters in the area.
SDF spokesman Talal Sello insisted there was no imminent danger to the dam, the largest in Syriat.
“There have been no air strikes on the dam,” he said.
SDF forces were helicoptered behind ISIL lines last week by US forces to begin their assault on the dam, which is around 55km west of Raqqa.
“We carried out this operation to land there to avoid shelling or damage to the dam,” Mr Sello said.
SDF fighters reached one of the entrances of the dam on Friday, battling ISIL in clashes in which the extremists had been killed and wounded.
But the dam remains under ISIL control, with SDF progress being hampered by the exposed nature of the terrain, which is also heavily mined, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitor said.
ISIL issued warnings through its propaganda agency Amaq warning the dam “is threatened with collapse at any moment because of American strikes and a large rise in water levels”.
But the source at the dam said there had not yet been significant water level increases, though he acknowledged levels would rise if the facility remained out of service.
Earlier this month, the UN’s humanitarian coordination agency OCHA said water levels in the Euphrates had risen 10 metres since late January, in part from heavy rainfall and snow.
But it warned that damage to the dam “could lead to massive scale flooding across Raqqa and as far away as Deir Ezzor” province to the south-east.
Any further rises in the water level or damage to the Tabqa dam “would have catastrophic humanitarian implications in all areas downstream”, the UN warned.
More than 320,000 people have been killed in Syria since its conflict began in March 2011 with anti-government protests.
* Associated Press and Agence France-Presse
