ISIS controls half of Syria ---Rights group

Islamic State is now controlling more than half of Syria after the extremist militia seized the historic city of Palmyra, a monitoring group said on Thursday.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the Islamic State group now controls around 95,000 square kilometres - more than 50 per cent of Syria's total geographic territory, reports dpa.
The al-Qaeda splinter group has a presence in nine of Syria's 14 provinces, mainly in the east and north, according to the Britain-based Observatory.  
It controls all of Syria's major oil and gas fields except al-Shaar - still controlled by the government in the desert region of Palmyra - and the Ramilan fields controlled by Kurdish rebels in al-Hassakeh region near the Iraqi border, the watchdog said.
On Wednesday, the jihadists took full control of Palmyra, home to ancient ruins listed by UNESCO as a World Heritage site, raising fears about the fate of the city's antiquities.
"Palmyra is an extraordinary World Heritage Site in the desert and any destruction to Palmyra is not just a war crime but it will mean an enormous loss for humanity," said Irina Bokova, the director-general of UNESCO.
"We are speaking about the birth of human civilization. We are speaking about something that belongs to the whole of humanity," she added.
Islamic State, which regards statues and monuments as idolatrous, has looted and demolished anicent sites in neighbouring Iraq, where it controls vast swathes of territory.
The head of Syria' museums and antiquities department, Maamoun Abdul-Kareem, called on the world community to take action to save Palmyra's ruins. "Support messages are not enough," he told Syria's official News Agency SANA.
A UNESCO official meanwhile told dpa that most of the artefacts, which could be transferred from Palmyra, had already been moved to a "safe place" outside the desert city.
"Syrian authorities are closely coordinating with UNESCO, but we fear for the rest of the ruins, which are still there," he said, requesting anonymity.
Islamic State began a major offensive against regime forces in Palmyra on May 13, taking advantage of the exhaustion of the Syrian army locked in a four-year war against a wide spectrum of rebels seeking to oust President Bashar al-Assad.
Palmyra is also symbolic as it is home to Syria's most notorious political prison, where hundreds of Islamist detainees were massacred in 1980 after an assassination attempt against the then president Hafez al-Assad, father of Bashar.
Palmyra is strategically located at the junction of desert highways between Homs in central Syria, the capital Damascus in the west and Deir al-Zour in the east.
Activists described the situation in Palmyra, also known as Tadmour, as miserable on Thursday.
"There has been no electricity in the city for the past four days. Most hospitals have a shortage of essential medicines," the Observatory's head, Rami Abdel-Rahman, said.
He added that more than 100,000 people, mostly refugees from other conflict areas in Syria, lived in Palmyra before its capture by Islamic State militants.
Activists based in Palmyra meanwhile reported that the jihadists released dozens of detainees from the city's central prison, including 27 Lebanese nationals, who had allegedly been in jail for 35 years and listed as missing in the homeland.
There was no official confirmation in Beirut.
An estimated 600 Lebanese were kidnapped during Lebanon's 15-year civil war that erupted in 1975, and have since been purportedly held in Syrian prisons. Syria has always denied these claims.
Islamic State's capture of Palmyra marks its second biggest victory in less than a week. On Sunday, the jihadist movement seized Ramadi, the capital city of Anbar province in western Iraq.
Islamic State's latest advances in Syria and Iraq show that the radical group is still formidable, months after the United States started air campaigns in both countries.