The Lion of al-Lat, a 2,000-year-old statue of a lion holding a gazelle in its mouth, had been felled by an Islamic State demolition team. (Al Lat was the most famous goddess venerated in the Arabic peninsula, before Islam).
The lion’s broken nose had been placed in front of a pile of ancient rubble, its two large nostrils pointing upward.
Amid the ruins, we heard repeated booms emanating from the city center, where plumes of smoke and dust rose into the desert sky. My Hezbollah escort and Syrian soldiers explained that explosive-disposal teams were clearing mines left behind by retreating Islamic State fighters.
Dusty, brown burlap hoods littered the floor of the Roman amphitheater, where Islamic State gunmen theatrically staged a mass execution.
The Hezbollah militiamen with whom I traveled were eager to show that their group had helped rescue Palmyra, a site important to world heritage. Russia, which provided air support; the Syrian Army; and other allied militias that helped fight the Islamic State are all claiming part of the credit for driving its forces out of the city.
During their occupation, Islamic State fighters toppled the gates along the ancient Roman promenade, the Decumanus Maximus.
Newly broken columns with stained exteriors revealed their white-stone cores and lay on piles of rubble alongside columns that had fallen centuries earlier.
“Our enemies are so stupid,” Mohammad Salem, an Islamic State official, said from the outskirts of Palmyra, which lies beside the modern city of Tadmur. “We captured a whole town and houses from them, and they recaptured sand and destruction.”
The grand Roman amphitheater in Palmyra remained standing, weeds growing between the cracks in the terraced seating built in the second century.
On a wall on the back of the amphitheater stage, Islamic State gunmen had drawn two crude targets in chalk. Tight clusters of pockmarks on the ancient stone walls showed where the militants had been taking target practice.
Continue reading the main story
When I visited this weekend, the front gate of Palmyra’s museum was locked with a heavy padlock, and buildings throughout the city had been heavily damaged by explosions.
Despite the Islamic State’s efforts, many of the ancient sites in Palmyra were undamaged. The destruction in the modern parts of Tadmur was far worse.
Shops, cafes and houses in the city appeared to have been abandoned, empty of any signs of the once-vibrant city life in Syria.
Syrian soldiers and allied militiamen said that if residents were allowed to return to the city, Islamic State fighters might come back with them, and attempt to re-establish their presence in the city.
Adonis Diaries 