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ISIS Fighters Enter Syrian City of Palmyra, Nearing Ancient Ruins ISIS Fighters Seize Control of Syrian City of Palmyra, and Ancient Ruins
(about 4 hours later)
BEIRUT, Lebanon — Islamic State fighters fought their way into a part of the central Syrian city of Palmyra on Wednesday, bringing them within blocks of one of the world’s most magnificent ancient sites. BEIRUT, Lebanon — Islamic State militants swept into the desert city of Palmyra in central Syria on Wednesday, and by evening were in control of it, residents and Syrian state news media said, a victory that gives them another strategically important prize five days after the group seized the Iraqi city of Ramadi.
As they have swept across Syria and Iraq, the extremists have destroyed or damaged numerous ancient sites and major cultural artifacts, condemning them as idolatry, even as they pillage and sell off more portable items to finance their activities. The militants’ approach to the ruins of ancient Palmyra, with their grand 2,000-year-old colonnades and tombs, has raised fears both locally and internationally that they too may be destroyed. Palmyra has extra resonance, with its grand complex of 2,000-year-old colonnades and tombs, one of the world’s most magnificent remnants of antiquity, as well as the grimmer modern landmark of Tadmur Prison, where Syrian dissidents have languished over the decades.
Modern Palmyra, also known as Tadmur, is a relatively remote desert outpost of 50,000 people, but it sits astride the main road from the Islamic State strongholds in the east to the more populous west of Syria. It is also near gas fields that the militant group has repeatedly attacked, and last week managed to partially seize. Syrian government forces held the militants out of the city for several days, but withdrew from some checkpoints on Wednesday, residents said. But for the fighters on the ground, the city of 50,000 people is significant because it sits among gas fields and astride a network of roads across the country’s central desert. Palmyra’s vast unexcavated antiquities could also provide significant revenue through illegal trafficking.
The fact that the Islamic State group, also known as ISIS or ISIL, has been able to advance into Palmyra, five days after seizing Ramadi, in the Iraqi province of Anbar, demonstrates its ability to carry out complex operations simultaneously on multiple fronts, in the face of pitched resistance on the ground and from the air. Control of Palmyra gives the Islamic State command of roads leading from its strongholds in eastern Syria to Damascus and the other major cities of the populated west, as well as new links to western Iraq, the other half of its self-declared caliphate.
In battles overnight, the militants captured several important locations in the northern part of Palmyra, including two security facilities and the public central bakery, according to local anti-government activists. The advance, in which residents described soldiers and the police fleeing, wounded civilians unable to reach hospitals and museum workers hurrying to pack up antiquities, comes even as the United States is scrambling to come up with a response to the loss of Ramadi, the capital of Iraq’s Anbar Province.
Khaled al-Homsi, an activist who opposes both the government and the Islamic State and closely monitors the Palmyra ruins, said that government workers removed artifacts from the museum near the site on Wednesday, and that other objects were taken away earlier for safekeeping. Syria’s chief antiquities official told Reuters that hundreds of statues had been relocated. The two successes, at opposite ends of a battlefield sprawling across two countries, showed the Islamic State’s ability to shake off setbacks and advance on multiple fronts, less than two months after it was driven from the Iraqi city of Tikrit — erasing any notion that the group had suffered a game-changing blow.
He said that in recent days, strikes by Syrian government warplanes had come dangerously close to the site’s medieval citadel. Islamic State fighters were moving farther into the modern city on Wednesday afternoon, he said, but had not yet reached the ancient site. In Iraq, it has left the United States military in the uncomfortable position of supporting an attempt to reclaim Ramadi, in Iraq’s Sunni heartland, with the help of Iranian-backed Shiite militias whose participation in the fight there Washington had previously opposed.
“I’m here and still breathing,” he said in a text message. In Syria, a new awkwardness arises. Any airstrikes against Islamic State forces in and around Palmyra would probably directly benefit the forces of President Bashar al-Assad. Until now, United States-led airstrikes in Syria had largely focused on areas far outside government control, to avoid the perception of aiding a president whose ouster President Obama has called for.
The city, whose Tadmur prison is notorious for the torture of political detainees, was partly held for a time earlier in the Syrian civil war by non-Islamic State rebel fighters, before the Islamic State was a major factor in the conflict. More recently, though, the city has been in government hands, and the relatively moderate Syrian insurgents have no presence there, leaving some opponents of President Bashar al-Assad of Syria in the odd position of hoping his troops can succeed in protecting the site. There have also been calls from international cultural organizations to protect the ruins — although how that could be done is unclear — to prevent a repeat of Islamic State attacks on other renowned ancient sites in recent months.
The symbolism of the ruins has been claimed by several sides in Syria’s multifront war. Local rebels once called themselves Sons of Zenobia, referring to an ancient queen of Palmyra, and some government troops have vowed in social media posts that “Zenobia will never fall.” As they have swept across Syria and Iraq, Islamic State fighters have destroyed or damaged numerous ancient sites and sculptures, condemning them as idolatry in slickly produced recruitment films, even as they pillage and sell off more portable items to finance their activities. That has raised fears both locally and internationally that Palmyra, a United Nations world heritage site, could also suffer irrevocable damage.
International antiquities officials have said that it would be catastrophic if the ruins, which stand as a crossroads of ancient Greek, Roman, Persian and Islamic cultures, were to be destroyed or damaged. The fall of Palmyra has also brought to a head, in a new way, the dilemma of Syrians who oppose both the Islamic State and Mr. Assad. The city was partly held for a time by local rebel fighters, before the Islamic State took shape as a major player in the conflict. But they no longer have a presence there, putting some of Mr. Assad’s opponents in the odd position of hoping that his forces can protect the city, and the ruins.
At the same time, residents lament that more attention has been focused on the threat to the ruins than on the plight of the 50,000 residents and tens of thousands of displaced people in and around Palmyra. There have been reports that Islamic State fighters massacred captive soldiers and civilians in outlying villages last week. “It’s the elephant in the room,” said Amr al-Azm, a former Syrian antiquities official who now teaches at Shawnee State University in Indiana. He has joined calls in recent days for international protection for the ruins. That, he said, would effectively mean a military intervention aiding the government he fervently opposes.
Several Palmyra residents said on Wednesday that they were staying indoors and hoping to remain neutral. “I’m really frustrated that I’ve been reduced to this situation” he said, complaining that Mr. Assad’s success in “pushing this binary on us Syrians and the international community: There is no alternative, it’s either us or a far worse threat.”
But no intervention appears likely. People in Palmyra, a relatively remote city, its population swollen with tens of thousands of displaced Syrians, were left on their own, literally squeezed between government forces and the Islamic State.
Residents said that by nightfall, the Islamic State had seized most of the city. Soldiers and police could be seen fleeing, they said, prompting one cafe owner to exclaim over the phone, “Treason! It’s treason.”
Workers could be seen earlier Wednesday packing up four truckloads of small boxes from the museum on the edge of the ruins, apparently carting away more antiquities in addition to items already removed for safekeeping, said Khaled al-Homsi, a Palmyra resident and anti-government activist who documents damage to the site by combatants.
The Islamic State was coming closer, he said, as a squad of 12 soldiers who had manned a nearby checkpoint appeared to withdraw. As he spoke over Internet chat, a boom could be heard; he said government airstrikes were coming dangerously close to the archaeological site’s medieval citadel.
“It’s bad today,” Khalil al-Hariri, the museum’s director, in a brief phone conversation, while Syria’s top antiquities director told Reuters that hundreds of objects were being removed to safety. Another museum employee, who had earlier vowed not to leave, said by phone, “Pray for us.”
The ancient site is close to the hearts of Syrians on both sides of the original conflict between Mr. Assad and his opponents, which began with political protests in 2011 and metastasized into a multi-front war.
Local rebels — early in the conflict, before the Islamic State appeared on the scene — once called themselves Grandchildren of Zenobia, referring to an ancient queen of Palmyra. In the recent fighting, some government troops had vowed in social media posts that “Zenobia will never fall.”
In battles overnight, the militants captured several important locations in the northern part of Palmyra, including two security facilities and the public central bakery, according to anti-government activists, who said they had not yet entered the ruins.
“I’m here and still breathing,” Mr. Homsi, who uses a nom de guerre for his safety said in a text message earlier Wednesday.
At the same time, he lamented that more attention had been focused on the threat to the ruins than to the city’s people. Islamic State fighters massacred captive soldiers and civilians in outlying villages last week, according to a government soldier whose comrades were killed. And Mr. Homsi said several civilians had been killed in cross-fire in Palmyra, unable to get treatment at the hospital, which was being used solely for military casualties.
Several Palmyra residents said on Wednesday that they were staying indoors and hoping to stay out of fighting or politics. Asked what he would do if forced to choose between the government and the Islamic State, Mr. Homsi was silent for several seconds. Finally he said, “I will try to remain neutral.” By Wednesday night, he had gone into hiding.