Fighting between Islamic State
militants and the Syrian army was reported on Saturday near an ancient
citadel in the historic city of Palmyra, the target of a big offensive
by the jihadist group that has raised concern for the U.N. world
heritage site.
A partial view of the ancient oasis city of Palmyra, 215 kilometres northeast of Damascus, Syria, on March 14, 2014
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights,
a UK-based group that reports on the war, also said Islamic State
militants had executed 23 people on Friday including nine minors and
five women in areas seized from state control outside the city.
A Syrian military source said Islamic
State was keeping up its attack but at "a far distance" from the city
which had been secured with army reinforcements. Fighting continued on
Saturday but at a lower intensity.
Palmyra, also known as Tadmur, is home
to extensive ruins of one of the most important cultural centres of the
ancient world. It was put on UNESCO's list of World Heritage in danger
in 2013.
Islamic State, which espouses a
puritanical Islamist ideology, has destroyed antiquities and ancient
monuments in Iraq. The government's antiquities chief has said the
jihadists will destroy Palmyra's ruins too if they take the area.
Palmyra is also of strategic importance,
sitting at a highway intersection linking it to the cities of Homs and
Damascus, some 240 km (150 miles) to the southwest.
The mass execution reported by the
Observatory is the second such killing it has recorded since Islamic
State advanced this week into the area. In the first, the Observatory
said the jihadists had executed 26 men, beheading 10 of them.
The Syrian military source said there had been one massacre of 30 or more people in that area, including elderly men.
The Syrian military has been mounting
air strikes against Islamic State fighters in the area. Rami
Abdulrahman, who runs the Observatory, said the sides were fighting near
a military intelligence building in Palmyra on Saturday.
Fighting was also reported at a gas
field to the east of Palmyra. A statement posted by Islamic State
supporters on Twitter said the group had taken large parts of the gas
field. The military source said that attack was also repelled.
The Islamic State offensive in central
Syria has added to the pressures facing government forces that have
faced significant setbacks since late March in the four-year-long war.
Other insurgent groups fighting
President Bashar al-Assad have seized control of wide areas of the
northwestern province of Idlib since late March. Assad has also lost a
border crossing with Jordan in the south.
This week the Syrian army and the allied
Lebanese group Hezbollah have driven insurgents from wide areas of the
mountainous region to the north of Damascus, shoring up Assad's grip
over the border zone between Syria and Lebanon.
Source: Reuters
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