Dispatch

Life Returns to Palmyra

After more than a decade of exile, locals are finally coming home. August 1, 2025, 2:20 PM Comment icon View Comments ( )

Two children stand and one sits on a trike as they play in a street littered with debris with damaged buildings on either side.

PALMYRA, Syria—Not long after the Islamic State arrived, 15-year-old Abd al-Hamid al-Ali realized he had to escape.

It was 2015, the zenith of Syria’s ruinous civil war. Palmyra, a modern town built beside the ruins of one of antiquity’s most storied cities, lies in the country’s central desert region. Before the war, it thrived on a steady stream of tourists and the oasis of date palms that gave the classical city its name. But its strategic location—situated at the crossroads between routes to

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