Palmyra offensive (July–August 2015)
2015 military operation of the Syrian Civil War
The Palmyra offensive of July–August 2015 was a military operation launched during the Syrian Civil War by the Syrian Arab Army in July 2015, in an attempt to recapture the ISIL-held city of Tadmur, known in English as Palmyra.
Background
In late May 2015, ISIL forces captured Palmyra and the surrounding countryside after a large-scale offensive.
Between 15 and 22 June, the Syrian Army recaptured the Jazal oil field, and reopened a transport route from the field towards Syrian government-held cities. The advance placed the Syrian Army 10 kilometers west of Palmyra; however, this was not the start of a large-scale offensive to retake the city. ISIL destroyed, by mining, some of the ruins of ancient Palmyra which are a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
The offensive
On 8 July 2015, the Syrian Arab Army and National Defense Forces, supported by the Syrian Arab Air Force, began an offensive towards Palmyra and by the next day made advances, positioning themselves 4–5 kilometers from the city. The military seized around a 15 km area, west of Palmyra, and some of the locations they had reportedly captured over the previous 24 hours was Nuzl Hayal and the Tel al Marmala, about 10 km from Palmyra's city center.
Syrian government forces made further advances 11 July, as the death toll since the start of the offensive reached at least 30 ISIL fighters and 12 soldiers.
On 13 July, the Syrian Army's special forces unit, the Tiger Forces, captured the Ancient Quarries in the northwestern countryside of Palmyra after fierce clashes with ISIL. According to a Syrian Army source, Syrian Arab Army (SAA) units were less than 2 km from the Qassoun Checkpoint, leading to the Qassoun Mountains of Palmyra. Two days later, the SAA and National Defence Forces (NDF) reportedly managed to capture Al-Meshtal and Qasr Al-Hayr south of Tiyas Military Airbase.
The public source identifies “Palmyra offensive (July–August 2015)” as 2015 military operation of the Syrian Civil War. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Palmyra, offensive and July.
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The record creator and administrative purpose are central evidence, because official documentation reflects both action and institutional priorities. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 22, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q20725032. Authority coordinates are 34.560, 38.267. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2015.
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This entry incorporates text from “Palmyra offensive (July–August 2015)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.