Syrian army advances inside Palmyra amid heavy bombardment

BEIRUT:  Syrian government forces advanced into Palmyra on Saturday with heavy support from airstrikes and artillery, state media and a monitoring group said, taking control of several districts in a major assault against Islamic State fighters.

Television footage showed waves of explosions inside Palmyra and smoke rising from buildings, as tanks and armoured vehicles fired from the outskirts.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said it was the heaviest assault in a three-week campaign by the Syrian army and allied militia fighters to recapture the desert city and open up the road to Islamic State strongholds further east.

Observatory director Rami Abdulrahman said Syrian soldiers and allied militias had taken control of one-third of Palmyra, mainly in the west and north, including part of the ancient city and its Roman-era ruins.

Soldiers were also fighting on a southern front, he said. Syrian media and Arab television channels broadcasting from the slopes of Palmyra´s mediaeval citadel, one of the last areas of high ground seized by the army on Friday, said troops had advanced inside Palmyra and had taken several neighbourhoods.

The recapture of Palmyra, which the Islamist group seized in May 2015, would mark the biggest reversal for Islamic State in Syria since Russia´s intervention turned the tide of the five-year conflict in President Bashar al-Assad´s favour.

The group, and al Qaeda´s Syrian branch the Nusra Front, is excluded from a month-long cessation of hostilities that has brought a lull in fighting between the government and rebels battling Assad in western Syria.

The limited truce has allowed peace talks to resume in Geneva. But progress has been slow, with the government and its opponents disagreeing fundamentally on the terms of a political transition, including whether Assad must leave power.

Russia, which along with the United States pushed for the talks to take place, has reduced its military presence in Syria but has strongly supported the Palmyra offensive, carrying out dozens of air strikes this week and acknowledging that a Russian special forces officer was killed in combat near the city.