ISIS destroys part of Palmyra's Roman Theatre

Militants from the Islamic State group have destroyed part of the Roman Theatre in the ancient city of Palmyra.

Syria's antiquities chief said the tetrapylon - a group of four pillared structures which were mainly modern replicas - has also been ruined.

The jihadists recaptured the Unesco-listed archaeological site in December from government troops.

The head of the UN cultural body said the destruction was "a new war crime".

Its director general, Irina Bokova, said what she described as "cultural cleansing by violent extremists" had resulted in "an immense loss for the Syrian people and for humanity".

IS destroyed other monuments after it first seized Palmyra in May 2015.

The group held the site and nearby city known locally as Tadmur for 10 months.

The militants were forced out by a Russian-backed government offensive in March 2016, but regained control while pro-government forces where focused on battling for the city of Aleppo late last year.

Maamoun Abdulkarim, the head of the Syrian government's Antiquities Department, told the Associated Press that reports of the latest destruction first trickled out of Palmyra late in December, and then satellite images which became available late on Thursday confirmed it.

The US-based American Schools of Oriental Research posted the images on its Facebook page, saying only two of the tetrapylon's columns remain, and the monument appeared to have been intentionally destroyed using explosives.

Only one of the structure's columns is original, as the others were rebuilt in 1963.

On Thursday, a monitoring group said IS militants had beheaded four people and shot eight others dead outside a museum close to the archaeological site.

The militants have previously carried out killings in the Roman Theatre.

When they first held the archaeological site, they blew up temples, burial towers and the Arch of Triumph, believing shrines and statues to be idolatrous.

They also destroyed the Temple of Bel - the great sanctuary of the Palmyrene gods - which had been one of the most important religious buildings of the 1st Century AD in the East.

Source
http://www.bbc.com/

ISIS destroys part of Palmyra's Roman Theatre

He looked after the ancient ruins of Palmyra for 40 years. Now ISIS has killed him.

Syrian archaeologist Khaled al-Asaad was brutally killed Tuesday by ISIS. The militant group beheaded Asaad, the foremost expert on Palmyra history, and then hanged his body from one of the Greco-Roman columns in the ancient city.

The octogenarian archaeologist had been held for about a month by ISIS and was killed after refusing to give up information on the whereabouts of Palmyra artifacts, according to Syria's director of antiquities, Maamoun Abdul Karim.

"Al-Asaad was a treasure for Syria and the world," Khalil Hariri, Asaad's son-in-law, who works at the Palmyra's archaeological department told The Associated Press. "Why did they kill him?"

Amr al-Azm, an associate professor in Middle Eastern history and anthropology at Shawnee State University in Ohio who worked for a period with Asaad, added that Asaad dedicated his life to working at ancient archaeological sites.

“Because he’d spent so many years working on this site, he was so familiar with the archaeology of the area and the city, he was a huge repository of knowledge, all acquired first hand just by being there, and working it," Azm says. "And really this vast repository of information has now been lost to us. And it’s not the kind of information you can acquire by reading a book or attending a lecture, it’s all very practical knowledge and information. And it’s all gone now.”

Asaad helped evacuate many of Palmyra’s movable artifacts as ISIS approached. But he decided to stay when ISIS arrived.

“The trucks were literally rolling out of the city from one end as ISIS were breaking into the city from the other," Azm says. "He could have jumped on those trucks and left with the artifacts. But he chose to stay instead. And I suppose paid the ultimate price for that.”

Palmyra, considered an archaeological jewel of the Middle East and a UNESCO World Heritage site, was seized by ISIS in May. The ancient city was an important trading hub along the Silk Road.

Asaad had worked over the past few decades with US and European archaeological missions on excavations and research in Palmyra and was widely recognized as an expert on the ancient ruins there.

He looked after the ancient ruins of Palmyra for 40 years. Now ISIS has killed him.