{"id":2433,"date":"2015-05-21T21:24:28","date_gmt":"2015-05-21T21:24:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/box5917.temp.domains\/~iriacom\/\/news\/?p=2433"},"modified":"2015-05-21T21:24:28","modified_gmt":"2015-05-21T21:24:28","slug":"isis-seizes-full-control-of-syrias-ancient-city-of-palmyra","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/isis-seizes-full-control-of-syrias-ancient-city-of-palmyra\/","title":{"rendered":"ISIS seizes full control of Syria’s ancient city of Palmyra"},"content":{"rendered":"

Islamic State (ISIS) militants in Syria have entered the Unesco World Heritage site of Palmyra after seizing the town next to the ancient ruins, reports say.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Unesco says its destruction would be “an enormous loss to humanity”, but no damage has been reported there yet.<\/p>\n

ISIS now controls the nearby airport, prison and intelligence HQ, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says.<\/p>\n

The militants have previously demolished ancient sites in Iraq that pre-date Islam.<\/p>\n

It is the first time ISIS<\/span>\u00a0has taken a city directly from from forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad and his army.<\/p>\n

Now there are fears ISIS<\/span>\u00a0may destroy Palmyra\u2019s Roman ruins and temples. The group caused uproar over its destruction of ancient sites and relics in Iraq.<\/p>\n

Palmyra\u2019s 2,000-year-old monuments were put on UNESCO<\/span>\u2019s World Heritage in danger list in 2013.<\/p>\n

The EU\u2019s foreign policy chief has expressed fears that thousands of people living in the city are now at risk as well as the cultural sites.<\/p>\n

\u201cMass killings and deliberate destruction of archaeological and cultural heritage in Syria and Iraq amount to a war crime,\u201d Federica Mogherini said in a statement.<\/p>\n

\"ISIS<\/a>

ISIS militants destroying artifacts in Iraq’s UNESCO World Heritage city of Hatra<\/p><\/div>\n

The city is a strategic win for ISIS<\/span>\u00a0because it\u2019s located on a highway linking government-held Damascus and Homs with the country\u2019s mainly rebel-held east.<\/p>\n

British-based monitoring group Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says ISIS<\/span>\u00a0now controls more than half of Syrian territory.<\/p>\n

Although the group has seized huge tracts of land in Syria, the areas it holds are mostly sparsely populated.<\/p>\n

AJ\/BBC\/EN<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Islamic State (ISIS) militants in Syria have entered the Unesco World Heritage site of Palmyra after seizing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2436,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[44,1],"tags":[60,14,356,13,11],"class_list":["post-2433","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle-east","category-news","tag-humanitarian-crisis","tag-isis","tag-middle-east","tag-syria","tag-terrorism"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/Syria-Palmyra.jpg?fit=690%2C370&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7jJWb-Df","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2433","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2433"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2433\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2437,"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2433\/revisions\/2437"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2436"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2433"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2433"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2433"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}