The United States has nearly finished setting up an air base in Kurdish-controlled northern Syria and was proceeding with the construction of a second base for military and civilian use, a Kurdish website said March 6, Reuters reported. According to the website's military source, most of the work on a runway in Rmeilan in al-Hasaka was complete while a new air base southeast of Kobani was being constructed, with scores of U.S. experts and technicians involved in the project. The United States sent dozens of special operations troops to northern Syria last year to advise opposition forces, including Syrian Kurds , in their fight against the Islamic State, which continues to lose ground in Syria and Iraq.