Nearly 300 dead in battle for Syria's Palmyra: activists

Nearly 300 people have been killed in several days of fighting since ISIS launched an attack against Syria's ancient city of Palmyra, an activist group said Sunday.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which relies on a network of sources on the ground, said the toll comprised 123 soldiers and loyalist militiamen, 115 ISIS fighters and 57 civilians.

Meanwhile, Syria's antiquities chief voiced guarded relief Sunday as government troops pushed ISIS back from the remains of ancient Palmyra.

The jihadis, who have demolished several ancient sites in neighboring Iraq, had advanced to within a kilometer (less than a mile) of the UNESCO world heritage site, one of the jewels of classical architecture.

"We have good news today, we feel much better," antiquities chief Mamoun Abdulkarim told AFP by telephone.

"There was no damage to the ruins, but this does not mean we should not be afraid."

Provincial governor Talal Barazi told AFP that the army had recaptured northern districts of the modern town of Tadmur which the jihadis had overrun on Saturday.

"ISIS's attack was foiled, and we ousted them from the northern parts of Tadmur," Barazi said.

"The army is still... combing the streets for bombs."

The jihadis launched a lightning offensive across the desert last week from their stronghold in the Euphrates Valley to the east, triggering ferocious fighting with the army, which has a major base just outside the oasis town.

Barazi said the army had killed "more than 130 jihadis." He gave no figure for the army's losses.

The governor said Tadmur's peacetime population of 70,000 had been swamped by an influx of civilians fleeing the ISIS advance.

"We are taking all necessary precautions, and we are working on securing humanitarian aid quickly in fear of mass fleeing from the city," he said.

Abdulkarim said he remained concern for the ancient site and its adjacent museum, in light of the destruction wreaked by ISIS on pre-Islamic sites like Nimrud and Hatra in neighboring Iraq.

The antiquities chief said he had been "living in a state of terror" that ISIS would destroy the 1st and 2nd century temples and colonnaded streets that are among Palymra's architectural treasures. (AFP)