BEIRUT -- Russia has built a military encampment inside a zone that holds the UNESCO world heritage site in the ancient Syrian city of Palmyra, where Islamic State militants were driven out recently by pro-government forces.
The Russian military described the camp Tuesday as "temporary," saying its few housing units were being used by explosives experts who are removing mines left behind by the militants. The Syrian government gave approval to build the camp, Russia said.
The head of Syria's Antiquities and Museums department, who said the city's antiquities are safer thanks to the Russian presence, nonetheless said he would not have granted Russia permission to build the camp if he had been asked.
UNESCO's media office would not comment, saying the agency is "still in the process of establishing and verifying the facts on the ground."
The American School of Oriental Research's Cultural Heritage Initiative posted photos from the satellite imagery and analytics company DigitalGlobe that show the construction on the edge of the ancient site, which the Islamic State damaged during the 10 months it controlled Palmyra.
Syrian troops backed by Russian airstrikes captured Palmyra in March, and fighting continues nearby. In recent weeks, Islamic State fighters began an offensive in which they captured a nearby gas field that took them close to the city.
Since the town was recaptured, Russian demining experts have found and detonated hundreds of bombs left behind by the Islamic State at and near the site.
Maamoun Abdulkarim, head of Syria's Antiquities and Museums Department, said the Russians have built a small barracks that includes offices and clinics.
Abdulkarim said his organization was not asked for permission but added that the presence of Russian and Syrian troops is important to ensure that the site remains in government hands.
Maj. Gen. Igor Konashenkov, a spokesman for the Russian Defense Ministry, said Syrian authorities had given permission.
"The deployment of this temporary camp through the end of the demining effort has been fully agreed upon with the Ministry of Culture and other Syrian agencies," he said in a statement. "Along with housing modules, it also has a field hospital providing medical assistance to the local population and field bakery, whose production is also handed out to the Syrians."
Russian combat engineers have defused about 18,000 explosives around Palmyra since it was recaptured, he added.
During their 10 months in Palmyra, Islamic State militants destroyed the Temple of Bel, which dated back to A.D. 32, the Temple of Baalshamin, which was several stories high and fronted by six towering columns, and the Arch of Triumph, which was built under the Roman emperor Septimius Severus between A.D. 193 and A.D. 211.
The American School of Oriental Research said images released April 22 showed the new structures inside the Northern Necropolis within the boundary of the site and "in close proximity to numerous aboveground and subsurface tombs and funerary temples."
Two new paved roads connecting them to the main road can also be seen, it said, adding that imagery from May 10 showed a paved helicopter landing pad and military vehicles.
Abdulkarim said he was unaware of a helicopter landing pad.
Osama al-Khatib, an opposition activist from Palmyra who lives in Turkey, said the Russian units were on the northern edge of the archaeological site, hundreds of yards from the temples and the Arch of Triumph. Some historical graves also are nearby, he said.
A UNESCO official who visited the Palmyra site last month said that if the encampment were in the buffer zone to the site, it would be in contravention to international treaties protecting historic zones. Syria is a signatory to the 1954 Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict.
The fight against the Islamic State is one of many fronts in Syria's yearslong civil war between government forces backed by Russia and rebel groups opposed to Syrian President Bashar Assad. Recent peace talks in Geneva, sponsored by the United Nations, failed to gain any substantive results.
In Vienna, world and regional powers agreed Tuesday to try to turn a faltering pause in Syria's fighting into a comprehensive cease-fire and boost humanitarian aid deliveries with the hope of restarting peace talks.
The 20-plus nations were not able to outline specific penalties for noncompliance with the truce, and the U.N. special envoy for Syria was unable to announce a date for the resumption of negotiations on a political transition.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said the participants set a June 1 deadline for the resumption of humanitarian aid to areas cut off from the outside world. Reading from a joint statement issued by the International Syria Support Group, he said that if land routes remain blocked, food aid will be airdropped and international pressure will be increased on those preventing such relief from getting through. Such pressure will also be applied to stop indiscriminate use of force by the Syrian military, Kerry added, without specifying what pressure the powers could apply.
The group also broadly agreed that "persistent noncompliance" with the truce could result in rebel forces being excluded from the agreement.
Kerry said as much to reporters, declaring that to end the conflict, "a variety of competing interests" are going to have to be reconciled.
A truce brokered by the U.S. and Russia reduced violence in March, but that truce has been steadily eroding. The Vienna conference was called after Staffan de Mistura, the United Nations envoy to Syria, appealed last month to the U.S. and Russia to directly intervene in putting the Syrian dialogue back on track.
De Mistura did not say when the Geneva talks would reconvene but warned of further delay in trying to end a war that has claimed about 300,000 lives, left about 12 million people homeless and made refugees of 5 million Syrians.
"We cannot wait too long," he said. "We want to maintain momentum."
Information for this article was contributed by George Jahn and Matthew Lee of The Associated Press.
A Section on 05/18/2016