Outrage as IS destroys monuments in Palmyra
The Islamic State group has demolished more treasured monuments in Syria's ancient Palmyra, a month after recapturing it from government forces, the country's antiquities chief said yesterday.
The news is a fresh blow for the Unesco World Heritage site, which had already been ravaged by the jihadist group during the nine months it held the site before being expelled in March last year.
"Local sources told us that 10 days ago Daesh destroyed the tetrapylon," a 16-columned structure that marked one end of the ancient city's colonnade, Maamoun Abdulkarim told AFP using an Arabic acronym for IS.
"Yesterday (Thursday), we received satellite photographs from our colleagues at Boston University showing damage to the facade of the Roman amphitheatre," he added.
Before being forced out of Palmyra in a Russian-backed offensive in March, IS razed world-famous temples and tower tombs at the site. The tetrapylon, built during the rule of the Roman Emperor Diocletian in the 3rd Century AD, consisted of four sets of four pillars each supporting massive stone cornices.
The monument had suffered considerable damage over the centuries and only one of the 16 pillars was still standing in its original Egyptian pink granite. The rest were cement replicas.
In a statement, Irina Bokova, director general of the Paris-based UN cultural agency Unesco, described the wrecking as "a new war crime and an immense loss for the Syrian people and for humanity."
"This new blow against cultural heritage... shows that cultural cleansing led by violent extremists is seeking to destroy both human lives and historical monuments in order to deprive the Syrian people of its past and its future," Bokova said.
Moscow yesterday deplored the new destruction, with President Vladimir Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov calling it "a real tragedy from the point of view of cultural and historical heritage."
Asked whether the Russian military is likely to step in to recapture Palmyra for a second time, Peskov said only that: "Russian military continues to support the Syrians in battling terrorists."