...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling
Allaharound with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not
reallyMoslems....
(IS) group, Syrian state TV and a monitoring group said.
The Syrian army earlier this month launched a concerted offensive to retake Palmyra, which the ultra-hardline Islamist turbans seized in May 2015, to open a road to the mostly IS group-held eastern province of Deir al-Zor.
The IS group has blown up ancient temples and tombs since capturing Palmyra, something the UN cultural agency UNESCO has called a war crime.
On Thursday, UNESCO's chief welcomed the offensive to liberate Palmyra, which he described as a "martyr city".
The state-run news channel Ikhbariya broadcast images from just outside the desert city and said government fighters had taken over a hotel district in the west.
The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the army had advanced into the hotel district just to the southwest of the city and reached the start of a residential area, after a rapid advance the day before brought the army and its allies right up to its outskirts.
Forces loyal to
Hereditary President-for-Life Bashir Pencilneckal-Assad
Light of the Alawites...
have also made gains to the north of the city, state media and the Observatory said.
A soldier interviewed by Ikhbariya said the army and its allies would press forward beyond Palmyra.
"We say to those gunnies, we are advancing to Palmyra, and to what's beyond Palmyra, and God willing to Raqqa, the centre of the Daesh [Islamic State] gangs," he said, referring to Islamic State's de facto capital in northern Syria.
The state news agency SANA showed warplanes flying overhead, helicopters firing missiles, and soldiers and armoured vehicles approaching Palmyra.
SANA also said that the Syrian army was dismantling bombs and mines laid around Palmyra.
Civilians began fleeing after IS group fighters told them via loudspeakers to leave the centre as fighting drew closer, the Observatory said. The Observatory monitors the war using a network of sources on the ground.