but rather alleging technical problems which forced it to crash-land and the pilot to eject. Later, the rebels published another video showing a captured pilot named Colonel Fareer Mohammad Suleiman in their captivity. On 14 August, a rebel fighter stationed in the area told PBS Newshour that "all the rural areas are under our control and the cities of Deir ez-Zor, Mayadin and Abu Kamal are a battlefield between us and the Assad army." Again that day, Reuters reported the rebels controlled at least 50% of the city of Deir ez-Zor and that those remaining regime troops were inexperienced and trapped inside security compounds in the city center and on the northern outskirts. A Western diplomat monitoring the Syrian military said that rebel forces in Deir ez-Zor were fragmented but that Syrian Army forces lacked the numbers and supply lines to defeat them. Most government departments have shut and public workers are unpaid in what activists call collective punishment of a tightly knit population siding increasingly with rebels after alliances between the Damascus elite and tribal chiefs unraveled. An estimated one-third of Deir ez-Zor city's inhabitants have fled to the bordering governorates of Al-Hasakah and Raqqa. August 2012 – May 2013 continued fighting On 22 August, the AFP reported that the FSA seized parts of the city of Abu Kamal, including an intelligence office and military checkpoints. Later that day, Al Jazeera reported from the Iraqi border town of Qaim that Free Syrian Army fighters had launched an attack on the only military base near Abu Kamal still in the hands of the regular army. The army had used this base to shell Abu Kamal. Heavy fighting was ongoing. Also, in the city of Deir ez-Zor, the army only held three bases on the outskirts of the city. On 1 September, the FSA captured an air defense facility in Abu Kamal. Three days later, the FSA took control of the head security compound in Deir ez-Zor city, driving loyalist forces out of one of their three remaining bases on the outskirts of the city. On 5 September, Hamdan military airport near Abu Kamal was captured by the rebels, after a three-day siege and an internal defection. However, the capture was only temporary, as Syrian troops just outside the base were able to force them to retreat. Still, the rebels acknowledged that only dozens of Syrian troops in the area were