\n Syria's army entered the ancient city of Palmyra late Wednesday after fierce clashes with the Islamic State jihadist group, several weeks into a Russian-backed assault, a monitoring group said.\n<\/p>\n
\n \"The army has entered a western neighbourhood of Palmyra and has seized control of part of it\" from IS, Rami Abdel Rahman, head of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, told AFP.\n<\/p>\n
\n \"There are clashes and heavy shelling\" across the historic city, where control has changed hands repeatedly over the past two years, said the monitoring group's chief.\n<\/p>\n
\n Abdel Rahman said earlier that Syrian forces, backed by Russian soldiers, had captured a string of hilltops overlooking Palmyra, bringing them within firing range of its western half.\n<\/p>\n
\n \"They are close to capturing the citadel. IS withdrew from it, but they may have left suicide bombers inside,\" he said.\n<\/p>\n
\n Supported by Russian air strikes and ground troops, government forces have been battling for weeks through the desert in the central province of Homs to reach Palmyra.\n<\/p>\n
\n IS jihadists first seized Palmyra in May 2015 and began to systematically destroy the city's monuments and temples, while also looting its many archeological treasures.\n<\/p>\n
\n They were driven out in March 2016 but recaptured the town last December.\n<\/p>\n
\n Syrian state media confirmed Wednesday that government forces were now in control of key territory around Palmyra.\n<\/p>\n
\n \"Seizing control of Mount Hilal and other hilltops overlooking Palmyra is an important step towards the collapse of the terrorist groups in the city,\" state news agency SANA said.\n<\/p>\n
\n And a senior military source in Damascus told AFP earlier on Wednesday that the army had also reached a strategic crossroads leading into Palmyra.\n<\/p>\n
\n \"This crossroads is the key to entering the city,\" the source told AFP.\n<\/p>\n
\n IS has ravaged the city's celebrated heritage, blowing up funerary towers and carrying out mass executions in the city's Roman theatre.\n<\/p>\n
\n Last month, IS destroyed Palmyra's tetrapylon monument, while satellite images showed damage to the theatre's facade.\n<\/p>\n
\n The new destruction was condemned by the United Nations as a \"war crime.\"\n<\/p>\n
\n On Wednesday, two funeral busts damaged by IS after it first captured Palmyra were brought back to Syria after being restored in Italy.\n<\/p>\n
\n The two busts, recovered by Syrian troops, had been badly disfigured with what appeared to be hammer blows.\n<\/p>\n
\n Modern technology -- including a 3-D printer -- was used in the restoration of the busts which date to the second and third centuries and had been transferred to Rome via Lebanon.\n<\/p>\n
\n - Turkey-backed forces, Kurds clash -\n<\/p>\n
\n On another front in the multi-pronged battle against IS, Turkish-backed rebels Wednesday seized two northern villages in Aleppo province from US-supported forces led by Kurdish fighters, rebels and the Observatory said.\n<\/p>\n
\n The rebels advanced east of Al-Bab, which they captured last week from IS, into territory held by the Syrian Democratic Forces, which is dominated by the Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG) that Ankara considers a \"terrorist\" organisation.\n<\/p>\n
\n Rebels said they \"captured the villages of Tal Turin and Qara... after violent clashes\" with the YPG.\n<\/p>\n
\n A top US general, meanwhile, said Russian warplanes on Tuesday bombed American-backed fighters in several small villages near Al-Bab after they mistakenly thought IS forces were in the area.\n<\/p>\n
\n \"We had some Russian aircraft and regime aircraft bomb some villages that I believe they thought were held by ISIS (IS), yet... actually on the ground were some of our Syrian Arab Coalition forces,\" Lieutenant General Stephen Townsend told reporters in a video call from Baghdad.\n<\/p>\n
\n Control of Aleppo province is divided between a myriad of armed groups -- rebels, jihadists, Kurdish militia and Syrian government forces.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Syria's army entered the ancient city of Palmyra late Wednesday after fierce clashes with the Islamic State jihadist group, several weeks into a Russian-backed assault, a monitoring group said. \"The army has entered a western neighbourhood of Palmyra and has seized control of part of it\" from IS, Rami Abdel Rahman, head of the Syrian […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":60,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[553],"tags":[],"ji_location":[],"class_list":["post-32326","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-live-feed"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n