Global News: ISIS Destroys Historic Archaeological Relics

ISIL-controlled territory contains some of the richest archaeological treasures on earth in a region where ancient Assyrian empires built their capitals, Graeco-Roman civilisation flourished, and Muslim and Christian sects co-existed for centuries.

At the time, Syria’s antiquities director Mamoun Abdelkarim said he feared the killings could signal the start of “the group’s barbarism and savagery against the ancient monuments of Palmyra”.

The Islamic State group has released a video showing several dozen Syrian government soldiers being executed by teenagers in the ancient amphitheatre in the city of Palmyra.

The oasis city is known as the “bride of the desert” for its exquisite collection of ruins along a historical trade route that once linked Persia, India and China with the Roman Empire.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights first reported that the Islamic State group had publicly executed a group of men in Palmyra’s amphitheater in late May, shortly after the militants captured the area from government forces. “They left… Tehran intact and instead they attacked our mosques”, he noted before pronouncing their sentences. Photos posted by the Islamic State included a sledgehammer and statue remnants. – AFP pic, July 4, 2015.Unesco yesterday condemned the destruction by Islamic State group jihadists of antiquities in the Syrian city of Palmyra, describing it as an attempt to strip the people of their heritage in order “to enslave them”.

She deemed the Islamic State’s activities as a form of “cultural cleansing” that has “reached unprecedented levels in contemporary history”.

The agency said that the statue, discovered in 1977, had been hidden inside an iron box in a Palmyra museum garden for protection but militants had discovered the hideaway and broken Allat God into pieces.

“This deliberate destruction is not only continuing, it is happening on a systematic basis”. Most prospective jihadis who leave their home countries understand that it’s a one-way trip, as they are expected to give their lives to the caliphate. Just this week, two children of unknown ages were publicly crucified in the Mayadin, Deir Ezzor province in eastern Syria because they had been accused of not properly fasting for Ramadan.