City's treasures in Islamic State's hands

Group now controls more of Syria than Assad government.

DAMASCUS, SYRIA— Fears mounted over the fate of one of the Mideast’s most prominent archaeological sites after Islamic State militants overran the historic Syrian town of Pal myra, seizing control Thursday of its temples , tombs and colonnade s.

The takeover al so expanded the extremists’ hold on Syria, making them the group controlling the most territory in the war-wracked country.

“The Syrian regime appears to be in terminal decline, and the Islamic State group in its timing is capitalizing on recent losses by government forces in the north and south,” said Amr Al-Azm, an antiquities exper t and professor at Shawnee State University in Ohio.

The militants overran the famed archaeological site early Thursday, just hours after seizing the nearby town in central Syria, activists and officials said.

They also captured Palmyra’s airport and the notorious Tadmur prison, delivering a startling new defeat for President Bashar Assad, whose forces quickly retreated. Hundreds of Palmyra residents fled the town of 65,000, and many more were trying to escape, said Talal Barazi, the governor of central Homs province, which includes Palmyra.

An oasis set in the Syrian desert, Palmyra is a strategic crossroads linking the capital Damascus and cities to the east and the west. Its capture raised alarm over some of the world’s most important ancient ruins, whose fate remained unknown Thursday, and no photos or video emerged from the militants.

“We are in a state of anticipation and fear,” said Maamoun Abdulkarim, the head of the Antiquities and Museum Department in Damascus. “The city is now totally controlled by gunmen and its destiny is dark and dim.”

A UNESCO World Heritage Site, Paly mra boasts 2,000-year-old towering Roman-era colonnades, temples and priceless artifacts. They are the remnants of an Arab client state of the Roman Empire that briefly rebelled and carved out its own kingdom in the 3rd Century, led by Queen Zenobia, with Palmyra as its capital.

Before the war, Palmyra was Syria’s top tourist attraction, drawing tens of thousands of visitors each year. It includes a 3,000-seat amphitheater overlooking a colonnaded main avenue where pl ays, concerts and youth festivals were staged.

With the capture of Palmyra, the Islamic State militants now control half of Syria and most of the country’s oil wells, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. Its vast terrain inside Syria stretches from its westernmost strongholds in Aleppo province to its core territory in the northeast and to central Syria, with footholds in Damascus itself.

Palmyra’s location in Syria’s heartland offers the militants several important advantages, sai d Faysal Itani, a resident fellow at the Atlantic Council. The town can now be used as a launching pad to threaten government positions and supply lines south of Aleppo and east of Homs and Hama, and open up a new approach to Damascus, seat of Assad’s power.

The Islamic State can also threaten regime supply lines to the eastern city of Deir el-Zour, where government forces are still holding out agai nst the militants.

“If IS manages to cut off Deir el-Zour, it is likely that the city would fall, essentially ending regime presence in that province, and consoli dat ing IS’ core territory,” Itani sai d.

The fall of Palmyra follows major setbacks for Assad in northern and southern Syria. “This is simply an indication of how overstretched the regime is,” Itani said.

It also comes just days af ter Islamic State fighters seized the strategic Iraqi city of Ramadi, illustrating the extremists’ ability to advance on multiple fronts at opposite ends of a sprawling battlefield that spans the two countries, where it has declared a caliphate or Islamic state on the territory it controls.

At the White House, Press Secretary Josh Earnest described the developments in Palmyra and Ramadi as setbacks, but insisted the U.S.-led air campaign was making progress.

An oasis set in the Syrian desert, Palmyra is a strategic crossroads linking the capital Damascus and cities to the east and the west.