USA TODAY International Edition
Syrian forces re- enter Palmyra
Troops poised to rid Roman- era city of Islamic State fighters
Syrian military forces have entered Palmyra, home to some of the world’s most prized Roman ruins, in a bid to wrest the city from Islamic forces who overran the area in December, according to the Syrian state media and activist groups.
Syria’s state news agency SANA said government troops loyal to Syrian President Bashar al- Assad entered the town’s archaeological site on Thursday. It said Islamic State ( ISIS) militants were fleeing the area. ISIS defenses began crumbling on Sunday, with the government reaching the town’s outskirts on Tuesday.
A SANA reporter said troops moved in slowly because of the threat of sniper fire, IEDs and car bombs, but was “establishing control over news areas and killing scores of terrorists.”
A media unit run by the allied Lebanese Hezbollah movement said earlier that government forces had reached the citadel, which sits on a hill overlooking the famous Roman- era ruins, according to the BBC.
Activist- run Palmyra News Network said the advancing forces have pounded the town with artillery and airstrikes.
In Moscow, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu had informed Russian President Vladimir Putin that Syrian troops had retaken the city “with the support of the Russian air task force,” Russia’s TASS news agency reported.
The Britain- based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights ( SOHR), which draws on reports from activists in the area, said mines and booby- traps left by militants as they withdrew stymied advancing troops. SOHR also said Russian warplanes and helicopters continued intensified bombing of the city and its surrounding eastern countryside of Homs.
This is the government’s second campaign to retake Palmyra, which is 150 miles northeast of Damascus. It seized the town from Islamic State militants last March only to lose it again 10 months later.
UNESCO, which includes Palmyra on a list of world heritage sites in danger, says the city was one of the most important cultural centers of the ancient world.
It was located at the crossroads of several civilizations, UNESCO noted. From the 1st to 2nd century, the art and architecture of Palmyra “married Graeco- Roman techniques with local traditions and Persian influences,” the United Nations heritage group said.
UNESCO director general Irina Bokova said in January that the latest satellite imagery confirmed the destruction of the city’s tetrapylon and parts of the theater’s proscenium. The tetrapylon was a monument marking a major road intersection along the colonnaded street of Palmyra.
“This destruction is a new war crime and an immense loss for the Syrian people and for humanity,” she said. “This new blow against cultural heritage, just a few hours after UNESCO received reports about mass executions in the theater, shows that cultural cleansing led by violent extremists is seeking to destroy both human lives and historical monuments in order to deprive the Syrian people of its past and its future.”