SYRIAN GOVERNMENT FORCES RECAPTURE PALMYRA FROM ISIS:

Syrian forces backed by Russian airstrikes drove ISIS from Palmyra on Sunday, 27 March 2016, state media and an opposition monitoring group said. Government forces had been on the offensive for nearly three weeks to try to recapture the central down, which fell to ISIS in May, 2015. The recapturing of Palmyra ends the group’s reign of terror over a town whose famed 2,000-year-old ruins once attracted tens of thousands of visitors. Their advance marks the latest setback suffered by ISIS, which has come under mounting pressure on several fronts in Iraq and Syria. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights confirmed there were around 400 deaths among the extremists. "That's the heaviest losses that ISIS has sustained in a single battle since its creation," Observatory director RamiAbdel Rahman told media sources. Palmyra, affectionately known as the "Bride of the Desert," used to attract tens of thousands of tourists every year. ISIS drove out government forces in a matter of days and later demolished some of the best-known monuments in the UNESCO world heritage site. ISIS also used Palmyra’s ancient amphitheater as a venue for public executions, including the beheading of the city’s former antiquities chief. (Fox) Continue to pray for the complete dismantling of this most brutal of terrorist organizations.