Syrian government forces retake Palmyra
By Catherine Hardy | With AFP



DAMASCUS: -- Syrian state television says government forces have now fought their way into the ancient city of Palmyra.

The army has been trying to retake Palmyra since it was seized by ISIL fighters in May 2015.

Clashes have raged in the historic city in recent days after government forces took control of a nearby hill.

Activists say Syrian and Russian planes provided air cover.

Palmyra is a key point on the mostly-ISIL held eastern Syrian province of Deir el Zor.

It was seized by ISIL in May 2015 and has remained in the group’s hands since then.

Shuttle diplomacy continues between the main powers charged with bringing the Syrian conflict to an end.

US Secretary of State John Kerry has discussed the fragile truce in Syria with his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov in Moscow.

Kerry is due to meet Vladimir Putin later in the trip.


-- (c) Copyright Euronews 2016-03-25

Great news. Terrible what IS has done to this ancient city.

yea, you forgot to mention the CIA made IS, like the CIA made (and now bad) Taliban

yea, you forgot to mention the CIA made IS, like the CIA made (and now bad) Taliban

This is the predecessor group to both IS and Al Qaeda. Started by a Jordanian after the Soviet-Afghanistan war. Though the CIA was involved there also.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jama'at_al-Tawhid_wal-Jihad

Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was a Jordanian-Palestinian Jihadist who had traveled to Afghanistan to fight in the Soviet-Afghan War, but he arrived after the departure of the Soviet troops and soon returned to his homeland. He eventually returned to Afghanistan, running an Islamic militant training camp near Herat.

A report released by the Washington Institute for Near East Policy in mid-2014 describes Al-Zarqawi as starting his jihadist group Jama'at al-Tawhid wal-Jihad, with Jordanian and other Sunni Jihadist militants, in 1999 in Afghanistan with its training camp in Herat, Afghanistan, and with "a small amount of seed money" from Usama bin Laden "which continued until 9/11".^[1]