IS seizes Palmyra

‘Regime troops collapsed and withdrew from their positions without resistance’
DAMASCUS: Islamic State group Jihadists seized full control of the ancient Syrian city of Palmyra on Thursday, putting the world heritage site and its priceless artefacts at risk of destruction.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said IS now controlled half of all territory in the war-torn country.
The capture of Palmyra, a former stopping point for caravans on the Silk Road, is the latest blow to efforts to hold back the advancing Jihadists, following the fall of Iraq’s Ramadi.
“IS fighters are in all parts of Tadmur, including near the archeological site,” Observatory head Rami Abdel Rahman told AFP, using the Arabic name for the city.
The Jihadists also proclaimed their capture of the entire city, which is strategically located at the crossroads of key highways leading west to Damascus and Homs, and east to Iraq.
The Observatory said regime troops had pulled back from positions in and around Palmyra, including from an army intelligence outpost, a military airport and a prison which the Jihadists captured overnight.
The monitor, which relies on a network of sources on the ground, said IS now controls more than 95,000 square kilometres of Syria, which has been engulfed by a multi-sided civil war since a 2011 uprising.
The Jihadists, notorious for demolishing archaeological treasures since declaring a “caliphate” last year straddling Iraq and Syria, fought their way into Palmyra on foot after breaking through in the city’s north.
“Regime troops collapsed and withdrew from their positions without resistance,” said Mohamed Hassan al-Homsi, an activist originally from Palmyra.
The assault on Palmyra came days after the militants took the Iraqi city of Ramadi, their most significant victory since mid-2014 when they conquered swathes of land, sparking a US-led air campaign to support Baghdad.
A US State Department official said the loss of Ramadi would force Washington to take an “extremely hard look” at its strategy against IS. The Jihadists sparked international outrage this year when they blew up the ancient Assyrian city of Nimrud and smashed artefacts in the museum of Mosul, both in Iraq. “The situation is very bad,” Syria’s antiquities chief, Mamoun Abdulkarim, said on Wednesday as IS overran the north of Palmyra.
“If only five members of IS go into the ancient buildings, they’ll destroy everything,” he added, calling for international action to save the city.
Hundreds of statues and artefacts from Palmyra’s museum have been transferred out of the city, according to Abdulkarim, but many others — including massive tombs — could not be moved.
In neighbouring Iraq, IS consolidated its hold on Ramadi, capital of Anbar province, just 100-km west of the capital.
On Wednesday, the Anbar police chief was dismissed, after video footage emerged online suggesting security personnel deserted their posts at the height of the IS offensive.
The militants’ gains have sparked international concerns, with France pledging on Wednesday to host high-level international talks next month in Paris over the threat posed by IS.
The US official said Washington would step up its aid to Iraq, including sending 1,000 anti-tank missile systems to help stop suicide car bombs and accelerating its training and equipping of tribal forces to fight IS.
Meanwhile, at least 40 rebels were killed as a regime air strike on their base in the northern Syrian city of Aleppo triggered a huge explosion on Thursday, a monitoring group said.
The Islamist rebels had shells stored at the base, which magnified the blast, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights head, Rami Abdel Rahman, told AFP.
“The shells exploded when the strike happened, and witnesses there described an explosion like an earthquake,” Abdel Rahman said.