ISIS captures 300 workers near Damascus, Syrian state TV reports

Syrian state TV says Islamic State militants have kidnapped 300 cement workers and contractors in an area northeast of the capital, Damascus.

The TV station says the workers from the al-Badia Cement Company were abducted on Thursday from Dumeir, an area where militants launched a surprise attack against government forces earlier this week.

State-run news agency SANA quoted a source in the company as saying that there has been no success in efforts to establish contact with any of the workers.

The U.K.-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which monitors the five-year-old conflict, said on Wednesday contact had been lost with workers at the cement works, but it was not known what had happened to them.

The monitor later gave a figure of around 170 workers who had been abducted from the cement factory and taken to undisclosed areas controlled by the militants in the Damascus suburbs, and 140 workers at the plant had fled before the militants arrived.

At the factory headquarters in Damascus, a spokeswoman declined to discuss the fate of the kidnapped workers, saying authorities had told the company to refrain from commenting on the abduction.

"The situation is not easy at all," she told The Associated Press.

There was no formal responsibility claim for the kidnapping, but the ISIS-linked Aamaq agency posted a video showing the deserted cement factory, located near a military air base. The video showed what appeared to be a Syrian soldier lying on the ground, apparently dead. One militant is seen driving a truck towing away a fork lift.

Families flee fighting in Dumeir

Fierce fighting broke out around Dumeir and the Dumeir military airport late on Tuesday night after Islamic State militants launched attacks on government areas northeast of the capital.

Opposition sources in the rural eastern suburbs of Damascus said large parts of the town of Dumeir, which was already in the hands of squabbling rebel groups, were also captured by the militants who had fired at civilians protesting against their presence.

Hundreds of families had fled since the militant assault, the sources said.

The attacks on Tuesday and Wednesday included detonation of bomb-laden cars around the Dumeir military airport and an assault on the nearby Tishrin power station.

Syrian and allied forces backed by Russian airstrikes this week forced Islamic State militants out of al-Qaryatain, which lies between Damascus and the ancient city of Palymrya, itself recaptured by the government last week.