Syrian soldiers fought their way into an air base in northern Syria on Tuesday and freed military personnel inside, the state television said, after a nearly two-year siege by Islamic State insurgents at the facility.
A military source close to the government said the army was working to secure the Kweires air base in Aleppo Province, where soldiers and officers have been under attack since 2013.
It is the most high-profile victory for Syria's army since Russia launched an air campaign in support of President Bashar al-Assad on 30 September.
"We, the heroes of Kweires, are now celebrating with our brothers this victory," one of the freed soldiers told state TV, speaking by phone.
The military source said hundreds of soldiers were freed.
"Your steadfastness for years is an evidence of your confidence in the Syrian Army and its hero troops," SANA quoted Assad as telling Major General Monther Zamam, head of Kweires air base.
The Britain-based monitoring group, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, also said that an advance party of troops had reached the air base and "broken the siege".
The Syrian troops have also been supported by Iranian forces and Lebanese Hezbollah fighters in a push to regain territory, largely in the north, lost to insurgents during almost five years of conflict.
Rebels have frustrated a campaign to reclaim territory elsewhere in the country, where Russian jets have flown more than 1,600 sorties in little over a month.
Syrian Information Minister Omran al-Zoubi praised the "strength and steadfastness" of the soldiers, and sounded a defiant tone against "terrorists", the term which Syria's government uses to describe all rebels fighting against it.
The breaking of the Kweires siege stood in stark contrast to Islamic State's capture of Tabqa air base in Raqqa province in the north of the country last year, when militants killed scores of soldiers.
