**'Islamic State (IS) militants in Syria have entered the Unesco World Heritage site of Palmyraafter seizing the town next to the ancient ruins, reports say. **Unesco says its destruction would be “an enormous loss to humanity”, but no damage has been reported there yet.
**IS now control the nearby airport, prison and intelligence HQ, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says.
**The militants have previously demolished ancient sites in Iraq that pre-date Islam. The BBC’s Jim Muir in Beirut says acute international concern over Palmyra might actually spur the jihadists on to make destroying it a priority, since they delight in challenging and horrifying world opinion. The ancient ruins are situated in a strategically important area on the road between the capital, Damascus, and the contested eastern city of Deir al-Zour.’
'Islamic State](Islamic State | The Guardian) now holds sway over half of Syria’s landmass after its seizure of Palmyra, where it has begun massacring a rebellious tribe and faces no opposition to its entry and sacking of the historic city’s ancient ruins.
“There are no forces to stop them [entering the ruins],” Rami Abdul Rahman, director of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group, said. “But the important thing also is they now control 50% of Syria.”
** Isis seized Palmyra on Wednesday night after a week-long siege that led to the collapse of forces loyal to Bashar al-Assad. The militants are drawing closer to his strongholds of Homs and Damascus and severing supply lines to Deir Ezzor in the east, which faces an overpowering Isis crackdown.'**
I cannot beleive these a-holes ( excuse my french ) in the western media. They are more concerned about the historic sites than the people living in that city. There are about 100,000 still there, and there are reports of ISIS beheading Syrian soldiers. This pretty much summarizes the disjoint between the western view of what is important versus what local populations think is important.
'A picture sent by activists to a Western journalist showed a row of men in a street in Palmyra - known locally by its Arabic name Tadmur - lying in a pool of blood. At least four of the men had been decapitated.
Other activists in the town told contacts elsewhere that the dead men were members of the Shaitat tribe, an anti-Isil Sunni clan from eastern Syria.
The Shaitat suffered one of the worst Isil massacres yet when they rose up against Isil’s conquest of eastern Syria. When Isil managed to reassert its authority last August it carried out a swathe of punishment killings, shooting, beheading and crucifying 700 people.
In a separate report, the anti-Isil activist group Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently said that the group had executed another member of the Shaitat tribe from Abu Hamam town in Deir Ez-zour province with a rocket-propelled grenade.
The jihadists were shown laughing and cheering as one of the men lectures the young man, tied to a pole, then retreats and fires the bazooka. They then kick the body of the man, named as Ibrahim Shraideh.’
Palmyra is on the supply router to the regime stronghold of Deir az-zour in East Syria. With Palmyra, Deir Az-Zour will will fall shortly together with the regime forces there. On top of that, this will leave the way to Homs and Damascus vulnerable to IS. This is going to be a crippling blow to the regime and a threat to the moderate rebellion.
