Fighters from the Islamic State group entered the northern city limits of ancient Palmyra Wednesday, seizing a state security building after intense fighting, a monitor said.

“The jihadists are once again in the north of Tadmur, after taking over the state security building,” Rami Abdel Rahman, director of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, told AFP, using Palmyra’s Arabic name.

“They also seized a checkpoint in the same area,” he said.

IS’s new advance comes after fierce clashes with Syrian government forces Wednesday on the northern and eastern edges of Palmyra.

On Saturday, IS seized most of Palmyra’s northern neighborhoods, but was pushed out by regime forces less than 24 hours later.

Fighting on Wednesday raged near security buildings in northern Palmyra, and close to the city’s notorious prison in the east.

The radical offensive on world heritage site Palmyra began on May 13 and has since left more than 350 people dead.

Mohammad, an activist originally from Palmyra, told AFP that the city was suffering from water shortages and intermittent electricity.

“A large number of people from the city’s north have been displaced into other neighborhoods. Some are sleeping in the streets,” he said.

On Monday, IS radicals seized two gas fields north of Palmyra that the regime had been using to generate electricity for areas under its control.

Antiquities officials fear that IS wants to destroy Palmyra’s pre-Islamic cultural treasures, which include colonnaded streets and ancient citadels.

The city is also strategically located at the crossroads of key highways leading west to Damascus and Homs, and east to Iraq.

In Idlib, a regime air raid on the opposition-controlled village of Darkush left at least 22 civilians dead on Tuesday, the Observatory said.

Darkush lies on the Syrian-Turkish border, just 50 kilometers (30 miles) northwest of Ariha, one of the last remaining regime bastions in Idlib province.

Also on Tuesday, a rebel coalition including Al-Qaeda’s Syria branch seized control of the Al-Mastumah camp — the largest military base in Idlib.
A huge blast and fierce explosions rocked the site, and rebels swiftly overran the base as regime forces fled south to Ariha.

According to the Observatory and Syria’s state television, a teacher was killed and at least 20 students wounded Wednesday when mortar rounds landed on their school in Damascus.

Syria’s conflict began in March 2011 with peaceful anti-government demonstrations, but has evolved into a complex war that has left more than 220,000 people dead. Arab News