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May 21st, 2015 
David Schulberg Located in central Homs province, the city lies 210km northeast of Damascus in desert that stretches to the Iraqi frontier to the east.
The fall of the city potentially opens the way for ISIL to advance towards key government-held areas, including the capital and Homs.
Deadly clashes had raged overnight between the Syrian government and ISIL, with troops firing rockets from outside Palmyra in an attempt to block ISIL’s offensive.
ISIL launched an attack on Palmyra last week, causing material damage to residential areas while clashes left many dead and injured.
They managed to capture two gas fields, leaving hundreds dead.
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| The 2,000-year-old city of Palmyra has been listed as a World Heritage site because of its architecture |
‘Historical artefacts moved’
Palmyra, also known as The Pearl of the Desert, dates back to the 1st and 2nd century and has been listed as a World Heritage site because of its architecture.
A Syrian antiquities chief, Maamoun Abdulkarim, who received UNESCO’s Cultural Heritage Rescue Prize last year, said hundreds of statues had been moved to safe locations.
Hundreds of statues and ancient artefacts from Palmyra’s museum have already been transferred out of the city, according to Abdulkarim.
Abdulkarim called on the Syrian army, opposition and international community to save the UNESCO World Heritage site.
“Palmyra is an extraordinary World Heritage site in the desert and any destruction to Palmyra [would be] not just a war crime but … an enormous loss to humanity,” UNESCO Director General Irina Bokova said in a video message released on Thursday.
Bokova said she was “extremely worried” about the recent events in Palmyra, calling for an end to the ISIL militants’ attacks on the historical city.
The UNESCO head further urged the international community, including the UN Security Council and religious leaders, to launch an appeal to stop the violence in Palmyra.
“It is important because we are speaking about the birth of human civilization; we are speaking about something that belongs to the whole of humanity,” she added.
However, if ISIS really controls Palmyra and destroys the city, then US led anti-Syria coalition of Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar would be responsible.
ISIS was being defeated in various parts of Syria including Palmyra; but after setting up of the secret CIA control room in Southern Turkey, both ISIS in Palmyra and `moderate’ rebels in Iddib renewed their offensive.
The US is quarely responsible for the `victories’ of barbarous forces like ISIS in Syria. US openly supported terorists.
This was confirmed in a recent article published on the Brookings Institution’s website titled, “Why Assad is losing.”
It states unequivocally that (emphasis added):
The involvement of FSA groups, in fact, reveals how the factions’ backers have changed their tune regarding coordination with Islamists like ISIS. Several commanders involved in leading recent Idlib and Palmyra operations confirmed to this author that the U.S.-led CIA operations room in southern Turkey, which coordinates the provision of lethal and non-lethal support to vetted opposition groups, was instrumental in facilitating their involvement in the operation from early April onwards and patching differences between ISIS and `moderates’. That operations room — along with another in Jordan, which covers Syria’s south — also appears to have dramatically increased its level of assistance and provision of intelligence to vetted groups in recent weeks.
Whereas these multinational operations rooms have previously demanded that recipients of military assistance cease direct coordination with groups like Jabhat al-Nusra, recent dynamics in Idlib appear to have demonstrated something different. Not only were weapons shipments increased to the so-called “vetted groups,” but the operations room specifically encouraged a closer cooperation with Islamists commanding frontline operations.
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Source Article from http://friendsofsyria.co/2015/05/21/isis-close-to-taking-palmyra-study-reveals-proof-of-us-dirty-role-in-destroying-human-civilization/
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