Islamic State Seize Control of Ancient City of Palmyra

Islamic State militants seized the ancient city of Palmyra after government defense lines collapsed there on Wednesday, prompting fears that the group would destroy one of the most important cultural centers of the ancient world, Associated Press reports.

“The Islamic State organization has now established almost complete control over the area from Palmyra to the Syrian-Iraqi border and onwards to the Syrian-Jordanian frontier,” said Rami Abdul Rahman, the director of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

The fall of the town to the Islamic State group was a significant loss to the government, because it potentially opens the way for the extremists to advance towards key government-held areas, including the capital of Damascus and Homs, and is close to gas and oil fields that supply to the regime’s strongholds in the west.

“The capture of Palmyra is the first time the al-Qaida offshoot has taken control of a city directly from the Syrian army and allied forces, which have already lost ground in the northwest and south to other insurgent groups in recent weeks,” Reuters writes.

Syrian state media said pro-government forces had withdrawn from Tadmur – the modern settlement on Palmyra – after “assuring the evacuation” of most of its civilian population and began withdrawing towards regime strongholds in the west.

Isis also reportedly took control of major facilities in and around the city, including the military prison of Tadmur, where Syrian dissidents have been imprisoned and tortured over the years.

As they have swept across Syria and Iraq, Islamic State fighters have destroyed antiquities and ancient monuments, prompting fears that Palmyra, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, could be destroyed.

“The fighting is putting at risk one of the most significant sites in the Middle East,” Irina Bokova, director general of UNESCO, said in a statement on Wednesday.

Syrian antiquities chief Maamoun Abdulkarim said that hundreds of statues had been moved to safe locations protected from ISIS militants, but called on the international community to save the site.

“Hundreds and hundreds of statues we were worried would be smashed and sold are all now in safe places,” he said.

“The fear is for the museum and the large monuments that cannot be moved. This is the entire world’s battle.”

Kurds Advance Against Islamic State in Northeastern Syria

Kurdish fighters backed by U.S.-led airstrikes are carrying out an attack on the Islamic State in northeastern Syria and have killed 170 jihadists in the past 48 hours, Reuters reports.

“The jihadists were killed in the past 48 hours in the province of Hasakeh, nearly all of them in very intense air strikes by the international coalition which is helping Kurdish forces in the area,” said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

The Syrian Observatory for Human rights reported that Kurdish YPG fighters and allied militias had effectively encircled Islamic State fighters in villages near the town to Tel Tamr in Hasakeh province.

Hasakeh region is important in the battle against the Islamic State because it borders land controlled by the group in Iraq.

Islamic State is still believed to be holding some 200 Assyrian Christians kidnapped several months ago from villages near Tel Tamr.

In its latest update on the coalition’s operations, the U.S.-led Combined Joint Task Force said on Tuesday it had carried out seven air strikes since Monday in Hasakeh that had destroyed vehicles, fighting positions and a shipping container.

“The U.S.-led alliance bombing Islamic State in Syria has been coordinating its air strikes in Hasakeh with the YPG, after successfully joining forces with the Kurds to drive the jihadists from Kobani, or Ayn al-Arab, in January,” Reuters reports.

Meanwhile, an air raid by U.S.-led forces killed at least 15 members of al-Qaida’s Syrian affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra on Wednesday in a raid on the headquarters of the group in Tawama village in the western countryside of Aleppo province.

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