Syrian army retakes Palmyra from IS
BEIRUT: Syrian troops backed by Russian jets completed the recapture of the historic city of Palmyra from the IS group Thursday, the Kremlin and the army said, in another blow to the extremists.
Bolstered by air strikes and ground troops from their ally Moscow, Syrian forces battled through the desert for weeks to reach Palmyra.
The oasis city has traded hands several times during Syria’s six-year civil war and become a symbol of IS’s wanton destruction of priceless cultural heritage in areas under its control.
Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu informed President Vladimir Putin of Palmyra’s recapture, a Kremlin spokesman told news agencies in Moscow.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a British-based monitoring group, said that the extremists had totally withdrawn from the desert city but not before mining several areas.
“The Syrian army is still clearing neighbourhoods of mines and has not spread out into the whole city yet,” said its director, Rami Abdel Rahman.
An army statement carried on state news agency SANA said its forces had “regained control over Palmyra and surrounding territory after a series of successful military operations”.
IS has suffered a string of setbacks since taking over swathes of territory in Iraq and Syria in 2014, and its two main strongholds of Mosul and Raqa both face assaults by forces backed by a USled coalition.
The extremists first seized Palmyra in May 2015 and began to systematically destroy and loot the Unesco world heritage site’s monuments and temples.
They were driven out in March 2016 but recaptured the city in December when the government was focused on seizing rebel-held east Aleppo.
Before IS first entered the city, Palmyra boasted temples, colonnaded alleys and elaborately decorated tombs that were among the best preserved classical monuments in the Middle East.
But many of the structures have been destroyed and much of the heritage looted for sale on the black market.
Moscow’s support has been key in the Syrian army’s Palmyra push, and its warplanes continued to bombard IS positions inside and near the city on Thursday, the Observatory reported.
On another battle front against IS, fighters of the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) announced they would cede several villages to the government as part of a deal brokered by Russia to avoid conflict with Turkey. The surprise announcement by the SDF marks the first time that USsupported fighters offered to cede territory to Assad’s forces.