Syrian troops have entered the ancient city of Palmyra and are poised to retake it from ISIS militants, Syrian state media reported Thursday.
State TV broadcast images that purportedly show government forces entering the southwestern part of the city, while a TV anchor said the army is “close to announcing that Tadmur” — another name for the area around Palmyra’s historic ruins — “has been cleared of ISIS terrorists.”
ISIS took over the central Syrian city in May, expanding its conquests in the region and showing its contempt for the people and their history.
By summer, the Islamic extremist group had blown up the nearly 2,000-year-old Temple of Baalshamin. Irina Bokova, director-general of UNESCO, characterized this act as “a new war crime and an immense loss for the Syrian people and for humanity.”
Palmyra, in the Homs countryside northeast of Damascus, was a caravan oasis when Romans overtook it in the mid-first century. In the centuries that followed, the area “stood at the crossroads of several civilizations,” with its art and architecture mixing Greek, Roman and Persian influences, according to UNESCO.
Syrians seize strategic hilltop
Thursday’s reported advance comes a day after forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad captured a strategic hilltop on Palmyra’s outskirts, according to state media and the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a London-based monitoring group.
The observatory said Thursday that Syrian troops were still clashing with ISIS fighters, receiving help from Syrian and Russian warplanes. The troops were a few hundred yards between a main southwest entrance into the city and 2 kilometers (about 1.25 miles) from a western entrance, the group said.
Citing a military source, the official Syrian Arab News Agency reports Syria’s army has taken over al-Qubour Valley, al-Qusour Mountain and al-Tar Mountain, all west of Palmyra.
The SANA report said troops had “eliminated, to the last one” all ISIS factions in the area.
The Syrian army had also “killed or injured all ISIS terrorists at Dedeman Hotel” and at a roundabout near Palmyra’s southwestern entrance, according to the same report.