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Syrian regime forces retake 'all of Palmyra' from Isis Syrian regime forces retake 'all of Palmyra' from Isis
(about 3 hours later)
Syrian government forces have retaken all of Palmyra in a major victory over the Islamic State jihadi group. Islamic State fighters have withdrawn from Palmyra under assault from Syrian government forces backed by Russian airstrikes, Syrian state media and activist monitoring groups said on Sunday.
“After heavy fighting during the night, the army is in full control of Palmyra – both the ancient site and the residential neighbourhoods,” a military source said. The capture of the modern city and its celebrated ancient ruins follows a three-week campaign and strategically leaves the approaches to the Isis heartlands of Deir ez-Zor and Raqqa to the east exposed, to where many fighters retreated.
It marks the latest setback suffered by Isis, which has come under mounting pressure on several fronts in Iraq and Syria in recent months.
Syrian television quoted a military source saying the army and its militia allies took “complete control over the city of Palmyra”. A state TV reporter spoke live from inside Palmyra, showing troops in the centre and some of the nearby buildings reduced to rubble.
Related: Restoring Syria's pearl of the desert: a reason for optimism amid the storm of terror
The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said there was still gunfire in the eastern part of the city on Sunday morning but the bulk of the Isis force had retreated.
Director Rami Abdulrahman said 400 Islamic State fighters died in the battle, which he described as the biggest single defeat for the group since it declared a caliphate in areas of Syria and Iraq under its control in 2014.
Moscow announced earlier this month that it would begin drawing down its forces in Syria but would continue to target Isis and other extremist groups. Russia’s defence minister said on Saturday that Russian jets had carried out 40 air sorties near Palmyra in a 24-hour period, hitting 158 targets and killing more than 100 militants.
Isis drove Syrian government forces from Palmyra in a matter of days last May and later demolished some of the best-known monuments in the Unesco world heritage site, including two large temples dating back more than 1,800 years and a Roman triumphal archway.
Isis also demolished Palmyra’s infamous Tadmur prison, where thousands of government opponents were reportedly tortured.
The Syrian culture minister, Issam Khalil, hailed the recapture of Palmyra as a “victory for humanity and right over all projects of darkness.”
As Syria’s top archaeologist prepared to inspect how much of the ancient city survived or can be salvaged, he vowed that Palmyra’s famous temples will rise again from the desert sands.
“We will not leave the temples destroyed,” Maamoun Abdelkarim, Syria’s director of antiquities, said.
“We have to send a message against terrorism that we are united in protecting our heritage. We will never accept that the children of Syria and the world visit the site of Baalshamin and Bel and the victory arch while they are lying in ruins on the ground. We will rebuild them.”
Isis blew up many of the city’s most revered buildings and murdered 82-year-old Khaled al-Asaad, the senior scholar who had preserved and studied the city all his life, when they swept into Palmyra last May. The videotaped destruction caused archaeologists around the world to despair.
Related: ‘Palmyra will rise again. We have to send a message to terrorists’Related: ‘Palmyra will rise again. We have to send a message to terrorists’
Isis fighters pulled out on Sunday morning, retreating to the towns of Sukhnah, Raqqa and Deir ez-Zor to the east. Advancing soldiers had been issued with warnings to watch out for booby-traps that could cause more damage to the site, Abdelkarim said, and archaeologists would follow in their wake to start the painstaking work of reconstructing the buildings from the rubble.
“Army sappers are in the process of defusing dozens of bombs and mines planted inside the ancient site,” the source added. “We will assess how much damage the stones suffered and we will re-use them in order to scientifically put back the temples,” Abdelkarim said in a phone interview from Damascus, promising a blueprint for reconstruction by next month. “We have the plans and the images and we will rebuild the missing portions until the temples of Bel and Baalshamin are rebuilt.”
The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) said there was still gunfire in the eastern part of the city on Sunday morning but the bulk of the Islamic State force had pulled out and retreated east, leaving Palmyra under government control. Kevin Butcher, professor of classics and ancient history at the University of Warwick, said restoration did appear possible. “Close-up images of the temple of Baalshamin after its destruction show that many of the individual blocks of stone remain. Many other ancient structures in the region have been restored from fragments, so that it’s perfectly possible for some kind of restoration to be achieved.”
The announcement came after Syrian troops backed by Russian ground and air forces on Saturday pushed deeper into the Isis stronghold.
After capturing the town of Al-Amiriyah on the city’s northern outskirts, regime forces fought their way into Palmyra’s northern and western districts.
“The battle for Palmyra is in the final stages, as fighting is now inside the city itself,” a Syrian military source on the outskirts of Palmyra said earlier on Saturday.
Drone footage released by a Russian television station showed collapsed archaeological structures in the sprawling Greco-Roman old city but with the amphitheatre largely intact.Drone footage released by a Russian television station showed collapsed archaeological structures in the sprawling Greco-Roman old city but with the amphitheatre largely intact.
Even as clashes raged in residential neighbourhoods on Saturday, the ruins remained eerily quiet, without a single fighter in sight.
The military source said the site was likely “rigged with explosives” and being watched by nearby Isis snipers.
Russia was “widely involved in the battle for Palmyra, whether in fighting directly on the ground, with their planes, or by intercepting communication” among Isis fighters, the source said.
Isis overran the Palmyra ruins and adjacent modern city in May 2015, sparking a global outcry and fears for the Unesco world heritage site known as the “Pearl of the Desert”.
The group has since blown up Unesco-listed temples and looted relics that dated back thousands of years.
It used Palmyra’s ancient amphitheatre as a venue for public executions, including the beheading of the city’s 82-year-old former antiquities chief.
Government forces began their large-scale offensive to retake Palmyra earlier this month, but this weekend marked the most significant advance yet.
“This is the fiercest offensive in the last three weeks,” said Rami Abdel Rahman, head of the SOHR, which monitors the war.
The government’s capture of Palmyra builds on gains made by pro-regime forces in the city’s south-western outskirts in recent days.
The source said victory in Palmyra would give the regime’s army confidence as it prepares to move towards Raqqa.
The northern city is the de facto capital of Isis’s self-styled “caliphate” which covers swaths of territory in Syria and neighbouring Iraq.
With the road linking Palmyra to Raqqa now under army control, Isis fighters in the ancient city can only retreat eastwards towards the Iraqi border.