by Reuters and Israel Hayom Staff
Following a three-week campaign, Syrian government forces reportedly recapture Palmyra on Sunday, inflicting a significant defeat on the Islamic State group which seized the city last year and dynamited its ancient temples.
The ancient city of Palmyra
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Syrian government forces recaptured Palmyra on
Sunday, state media and a monitoring group said, inflicting a
significant defeat on the Islamic State group which seized the city last
year and dynamited its ancient temples.
Syrian television quoted a military source
saying the army and its militia allies took complete control of the city
and were clearing mines and bombs laid by Islamic State fighters.
The 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 Islamic State force had pulled out and
retreated east, leaving Palmyra under President Bashar Assad's control.
For government forces, the recapture of
Palmyra opens up much of Syria's eastern desert stretching to the Iraqi
border to the south and Islamic State heartland of Deir al-Zor and Raqqa
to the east.
It follows a three-week campaign by the army
and its allies on the ground, backed by intensive Russian airstrikes,
aimed at driving Islamic State back.
Russia's intervention in September turned the
tide of Syria's five-year-old conflict in Assad's favor. Despite its
announcement that it was pulling out most military forces two weeks ago,
Russian jets and helicopters carried out dozens of strikes daily over
Palmyra at the height of the clashes.
Observatory director Rami Abdulrahman said 400
Islamic State fighters died in the battle for Palmyra, 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.
The loss of Palmyra comes three months after
Islamic State fighters were driven out of the city of Ramadi in
neighboring Iraq, the first major victory for Iraq's army since it
collapsed in the face of an assault by Islamic State in June 2014.
Islamic State has lost ground elsewhere,
including the Iraqi city of Tikrit last year and the Syrian town of
al-Shadadi in February. The United States said the fall of Shadadi was
part of efforts to cut Islamic State's links between its two main power
centers: the cities of Mosul in Iraq and Raqqa in Syria.
The Observatory said around 180 government
soldiers and allied fighters were also killed in the campaign to retake
Palmyra, which is home to some of the most extensive ruins of the Roman
Empire.
Islamic State fighters dynamited several monuments last
year, but Syria's antiquities chief told Reuters on Saturday that other
ancient landmarks were still standing.
Reuters and Israel Hayom Staff
Source: http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_article.php?id=32673
Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.
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