Iraqi, Syrian forces strike back at ISIL in captured cities

Forces in Iraq and Syria on Monday bolstered their offensives on the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group, in a bid to retake key cities in both countries.

Syria's air force carried out at least 15 strikes in and around the central city of Palmyra early on Monday, targeting buildings captured by the ISIL, according to a group monitoring Syria's war.

Meanwhile in Iraq, security forces and Shia fighters renewed efforts to retake the western city of Ramadi, as ISIL poured more fighters into the city that it claimed a week ago. 

Police sources said Iraqi forces had regained ground east of the city since launching a counter-offensive on Saturday, and on Monday had retaken parts of al-Tash, about 12 miles south of Ramadi, which lies only a short distance from Baghdad.

ISIL fighters overran the Syrian city, the site of some of the world's best-preserved Roman ruins, on Wednesday. They have killed at least 217 people execution-style in the area since May 16, including children, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. 

This was in addition to at least 300 soldiers killed by ISIL in fighting leading up to the city's capture, according to the Observatory.

"A bigger number of troops have disappeared and it is not clear where they are," Rami Abdulrahman from the Observatory told Reuters on Sunday. 

Syrian state media reported that dozens of those killed were state employees, including the city hospital’s head of nursing and all her family members.    

ISIL "mutilated [their victims'] bodies, under the pretext that they cooperated with the government and did not follow orders," Syria's state news agency SANA said, citing residents inside the city.    

ISIL supporters have posted videos on the Internet they say show fighters going room to room in government buildings searching for state troops and pulling down pictures of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and his father.

Activists have said on social media that hundreds of bodies, believed to be government loyalists, were in the streets.

ISIL's two near-simultaneous victories in Syria and Iraq mark the group's biggest successes since a U.S.-led coalition launched an air campaign against the fighters last year — and have forced an examination of whether the strategy is working.

The fighters have proclaimed a caliphate to rule over all Muslims from territory they hold in the two countries. They have a history of carrying out mass killings in towns and cities they capture, and of destroying ancient monuments which they consider evidence of paganism.

Al Jazeera and Reuters