ISIL victory at Palmyra threatens ruins
• Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant extremists seized almost full control of the ancient Syrian town of Palmyra after government defence lines there collapsed on Wednesday, though it remained unclear how close to the famed archeological site the extremists advanced, activists said.
Syrian state TV acknowledged that pro-government forces have withdrawn from Palmyra.
The fall of the town to ISIL is a stunning defeat for President Bashar Assad’s forces, days after the militants launched their offensive against Palmyra in central Syria. It is also an enormous loss to the government, not only because of its cultural significance, but because it would open the way for extremists to advance to key government-held areas, including Homs and Damascus.
The Syrian Observatory for human rights reported government forces collapsed in the face of ISIL attacks and withdrew from the town late Wednesday. A media collective for Palmyra also said the jihadists were now in control of most of the town.
It’s not immediately clear how close the militants are to the famed ruins, which are just southwest of the town.
Modern Palmyra, al s o known as Tadmur, is a relatively remote desert outpost of 50,000 people, but it sits astride the main road from ISIL strongholds in the east to the more populous west of Syria. It is also near gas fields the group has repeatedly attacked and last week managed to partially seize.
The fact ISIL has been able to advance into Palmyra, five days after seizing Ramadi, in the Iraqi province of Anbar, demonstrates its ability to carry out complex operations simultaneously on multiple fronts, in the face of pitched resistance on the ground and from the air.
Khaled al-Homsi, an activist who opposes both the government and ISIL and closely monitors the Palmyra ruins, said government workers removed artifacts from the museum near the site Wednesday, and there objects were taken away earlier for safekeeping. Syria’s chief antiquities official told Reuters hundreds of statues had been relocated.
The ruins at Palmyra are one of the region’s most renowned historic sites and there are fears the extremists would destroy them as they did major archeological sites in Iraq.
Home to a UNESCO world heritage site, Palmyra is famous for its 2,000-year-old towering Roman-era colonnades. Before the war, thousands of tourists a year visited the remote desert outpost, also known as the “Bride of the Desert.”
“I am te r r i f i e d,” said Maamoun Abdulkarim, Syria’s director-general of antiquities and museums. “This is a PR battle for Daesh, and they will insist on scoring victory against civilization by destroying” the ancient ruins, he said, using the Arabic acronym for the group.
International antiquities officials have said that it would be catastrophic if the ruins, which stand as a crossroads of ancient Greek, Roman, Persian and Islamic cultures, were to be destroyed or damaged.