BEIRUT (AP) — Syria’s military announced on Thursday it has fully recaptured the historic town of Palmyra from the Islamic State group as the militants’ defenses crumbled and IS fighters fled in the face of artillery fire and intense Russia-backed airstrikes. ISIS defenses of the town had begun to erode on Sunday, with the government troops reaching Palmyra’s outskirts on Tuesday. Activist-run Palmyra News Network (PNN) said the advancing forces pounded the desert town – a UNESCO World Heritage Site famed for its ancient Roman monuments and grand stone theater – with artillery and airstrikes during the day. “If we want to follow the game of Assad and Palmyra, it will be like watching Tom and Jerry.”

Earlier, the Syrian government’s chief negotiator Bashar al-Ja’afari had hailed Assad for keeping his promise to retake the ancient city of Palmyra, and vowed that every last inch of Syria would be retaken from foreign terrorists. Syrian government forces battling the militant Islamic State (ISIS) group re-entered Palmyra on Thursday in their quest to again take the historic town they had lost to the militants in December, state media reported. Before the civil war gripped Syria in 2011, Palmyra was a top tourist attraction, drawing tens of thousands of visitors each year. Moscow’s support has been key in the Syrian army’s Palmyra push, and its warplanes continued to bombard IS positions inside and near the city on Thursday, the Observatory reported. A 2014 report by a U.N. research agency disclosed satellite evidence of looting while the ruins were under Syrian military control. Opposition factions have also admitted to looting the antiquities for funds. The ISIS group has twice used the town’s Roman theater as a stage for mass killings, most recently in January, when they shot and beheaded a number of captives they said had tried to escape their December advance. Other ISIS killings were said to have taken place in the courtyard of the Palmyra museum and in a former Russian base in the town. The developments in Palmyra came against the backdrop of Syrian peace talks underway in Geneva, which have been without any tangible breakthroughs so far. Diplomats and negotiators have set their sights on modest achievements in the latest round of negotiations, after a week of discussions centering on setting an agenda for future talks. On Thursday, U.N. Special Envoy to Syria Staffan de Mistura was due for another round of meetings with both the government delegation and opposition groups. Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Gennady Gatilov told reporters Wednesday that “the parties have agreed to ... discuss all issues in a parallel way, on several tracks.”

After a Damascus request, the issue of terrorism is also on the table, he had said. Russia is a key sponsor of Syrian President Bashar Assad’s government in Damascus. “It is the second time that we see this handover and this is obviously being used for political reasons,” chief opposition negotiator Nasr al-Hariri told reporters in Geneva, adding that he considered both sides to be terrorists. Setting the agenda and strategy to guide discussions has proven difficult as the main conflicting parties dig in their heels over form and semantics. Turkey launched a cross-border operation in late August that it said aimed to counter both IS and the SDF, which is dominated by Kurdish fighters that Ankara sees as “terrorists.”

The surprise announcement by the SDF marks the first time that US-supported fighters has offered to cede territory to Assad’s forces. Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said Thursday that Turkey would not shy away from attacking the Kurdish group that dominates the Syria Democratic Forces, which captured Manbij last year after weeks of deadly fighting with ISIS. Ankara meanwhile renewed its threat to bomb Kurdish fighters unless they withdrew from Manbij, a former bastion of IS that is now under SDF control. Cavusoglu stressed that an operation to take Manbij had not started yet, but acknowledged that skirmishes between Turkish-backed forces and the Kurdish fighters may have occurred. That front line in northern Syria was further complicated by a concurrent announcement by the Syrian Kurdish side on Thursday that they had agreed with Russia to withdraw from some of the territory between al-Bab and Manbij, to make room for a buffer. The Manbij Military Council, part of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, said that under the deal, they will withdraw from a front line as the rival Turkish-backed forces near the Euphrates River. It said the territory to be handed over lay between the towns of Manbij and Al-Bab, which Turkish-backed fighters captured last week from IS, to create a buffer zone between them. However, there was no immediate confirmation of Palmyra’s seizure from the Syrian military and the Russian reports did not provide more details. However, Cavusoglu denied any such agreement was reached, and the Turkish and Syrian authorities have long regarded each other with thinly-veiled hostility.
The Syrian Army and its allies recapture the ancient city of Palmyra from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.