SYRIAN troops were poised to take back the ancient city of Palmyra yesterday as Isis terrorists fled for the second time.

The official Sana news agency said troops had entered the ancient Roman ruins southwest of the city and were pursuing the retreating extremists.

That followed their seizure of the Palmyra triangle road junction, the 13th-century Palmyra castle and several hilltops on Thursday under heavy air cover, including supporting fire from Russian helicopter gunships.

Unconfirmed reports yesterday said the army was also assaulting the airport on the east side of Tadmur. A military source told Lebanon’s Al Masdar News that Isis had pulled most of its forces out of the town.

But reports said the troops’ return was delayed as Isis had left the town strewn with booby traps and suicide bombers were lurking ready to strike.

Isis seized Palmyra in May 2015, destroying antiquities and executing their elderly curator. The army took the town back in March last year, six months after the Russian military intervention helped turn the tide of the war. But Isis retook the city last December in a surprise offensive by 5,000 militants, who Russia accused the US of allowing to escape Iraq’s Mosul, now fully besieged.

Meanwhile in northern Aleppo province yesterday the Manbij Military Council said it would transfer control of territory west of the town to the Syrian army as a buffer against attacking Turkish-backed Free Syrian Army (FSA) extremists.

The council — part of the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) and dominated by the Kurdish YPG militia — said the agreement was reached with Russia.

But Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu claimed there was no such agreement, and reiterated Ankara’s objective of occupying Manbij against the will of Damascus.

On Wednesday the FSA claimed to have captured two Syrian-allied Iraqi volunteer militia — although Syrian Army sources said they were from the Desert Hawks Brigade.

Turkey and its FSA allies invaded northern Syria after the SDF captured Manbij last August following three months of bloody fighting.

And also on Wednesday the Russian Defence Ministry denied Pentagon claims its air forces or Syria’s had accidentally bombed SDF forces in Manbij, saying neither had conducted air strikes in the area.