Syrian forces battel IS extremists, re-enter Palmyra

BEIRUT / AP

Syrian government forces battling the IS group re-entered Palmyra on Thursday in their quest to again take the historic town they had lost to the militants in December, state media reported.
The SANA news agency reported by early afternoon that government troops entered the town’s archaeological site, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, around mid-day, then the town itself, sending IS militants fleeing from the area.
IS defenses had begun to crumble on Sunday, with the government troops reaching the town’s outskirts on Tuesday. Activist-run Palmyra News Network said the advancing forces have pounded the desert town — famed for its ancient Roman monuments and grand stone theater — with artillery and airstrikes during the day.
This is the government’s second campaign to retake the desert Palmyra. It seized the town from IS militants last March only to lose it again 10 months later. Palmyra was a top tourist attraction, drawing tens of thousands of visitors each year, before the civil war gripped Syria in 2011.
The town, according to Mohammed Homsi, the director of the activist-run Palmyra News Network, is almost entirely deserted. IS fighters reportedly evacuated the last of their relatives on Sunday, he said. Archeologists have decried what they say is extensive damage to its ruins.
The Syrian government’s push has relied on the support from Lebanon’s militant Hezbollah group and Russian air cover, according to Hezbollah’s media outlets.
In Turkey, the country’s foreign minister said that with the completion of an operation to retake the IS-held town of al-Bab in northern Syria, Turkish troops will head to Syrian town of Manbij next, to oust US-backed Syrian Kurdish forces that Ankara views as terrorists and a threat to Turkey.
Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said on Thursday that Turkey would not shy away from attacking the Kurdish group that dominates the Syria Democratic Forces, which captured Manbij last year after weeks of deadly fighting with IS.He renewed calls for the new US administration not to support the Kurdish forces.