BEIRUT: Syrian government aircraft carried out intense strikes on Monday against the self-styled Islamic State group in and around the ancient city of Palmyra after its fall to the jihadists, a military source said.

“The air force struck more than 160 Daesh targets, killing and wounding terrorists and destroying weapons and vehicles equipped with machineguns” on Palmyra’s outskirts and elsewhere in the east of Homs province, the source said.

“We are pursuing Daesh wherever they are,” the source said, using the Arabic acronym for IS.

“Military operations, including air raids, are ongoing in the area around Al-Suknah, Palmyra, the Arak and Al-Hail gas fields and all the roads leading to Palmyra,” he said.

State television said “more than 50 Daesh terrorists” had been killed in the air strikes.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said at least four civilians had been killed in the raids, which were the most intense since the jihadists overran the city on Thursday.

Dozens of people had also been wounded in the raids, and IS was believed to have taken losses when a military security building was hit, said Observatory director Rami Abdel Rahman.

The strikes targeted several areas of the city, including some close to the city’s famed Greco-Roman ruins, a Unesco world heritage site, he said.

But so far they had failed to halt the jihadists, who advanced towards the capital Damascus and overran major phosphate mines about 70 kilometres south of Palmyra.

Published in Dawn, May 26th, 2015

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