Kuweires Military Aviation Institute

Kuweires Military Aviation Institute is an airbase and military aviation institute in Aleppo Governorate, Syria. It is situated some 30 km east of the city of Aleppo,[1] to the northeast of Kuweires Sharqi village, between as-Safira in the West and Dayr Hafir in the East.

Kuweires Military Aviation Institute


الكلية الجوية العسكرية في كويرس
Summary
Airport typeMilitary aviation institute
OwnerSyrian Armed Forces
OperatorSyrian Air Force
LocationKuweires Sharqi, Aleppo Governorate
Built1980
In use1980-present
Coordinates36°11′13″N 037°34′59″E
Map
Kuweires Air Base
Location in Syria
Runways
Direction Length Surface
ft m
00/00 8,300 (est.) 2,500 (est.) Concrete

The base was constructed with Polish support in the late 1960s as the primary base of the Syrian air force academy.[1] The base is home to the Military Aviation Institute (originally opened in Damascus in 1947) of the Syrian Air Forces since 1980.

Siege during the Syrian Civil War

Kuweires base, red dashed line = base limits, buildings in black, aircraft shelters in red, defense lines during siege in orange

Kuweires Airbase was defended mostly by cadets when it fell under siege by rebels in 2013. Rebel forces surrounded Kuweiris for more than a year but did not overrun it. As rebel infighting with ISIS intensified, ISIS took control of the siege around late 2013. ISIS besieged the airbase for two years, deploying heavy weapons and armored 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.[2] 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.[2]

Colonel Suheil al-Hassan and his Tiger Forces finally broke the siege on November 10, 2015 as part of the Kuweires offensive. Only 300 of 1,100 soldiers survived the siege.[2]

The Syrian government repaired the base immediately after lifting the siege, deploying a squadron of Aero L-39 Albatros fighter-bombers together with a Buk M1 surface-to-air missile system —operated by a combined Russian and Syrian crew— to defend the base.[1]

References
  1. Cooper, Tom. "Syria's Rebels: Turkey Won, and Lost, the Race to Al Bab". War Is Boring. Retrieved 6 March 2017.
  2. "Inside the Syria air base that held out against Isis for three years". 3 July 2016.
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