IS says it destroyed archaeological pieces from Palmyra

“It’s the most serious crime they have committed against Palmyra’s heritage”, Maamoun Abdulkarim, the head of the Syrian government’s Antiquities and Museums Department, told the AFP.

The Syrian rebels, calling themselves Jaysh Al-Islam or the “Army of Islam”, composed of approximately 25,000 soldiers following the unification of 60 rebel factions, can be seen making the captured ISIS fighters kneel before their gruesome deaths while one rebel announces: “Allah did not make a disease without appointing a remedy to it”.

So far the most famous sites have been left intact, though there have been reports that Isis has mined them.

In Isis-controlled territory around the Mesopotamian city of Mari, a trade hub founded in 300 BC, more than 1300 excavation pits have been dug in the past few months, according to satellite imagery. The issue was referred to an Islamic court in the IS-held northern Syrian town of Manbij, which ordered that they be destroyed and the man be whipped.

Islamic State group militants have destroyed six archaeological pieces from the historic town of Palmyra that were confiscated from a smuggler, the group said.

The statement included photos showing several carved busts being destroyed with sledgehammers.

“Eight statues were stolen in Palmyra from a tomb”.

“The Islamic State group executed two women by beheading them in Deir Ezzor province, and this is the first time the Observatory has documented women being killed by the group in this manner”, said Rami Abdel Rahman, of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. But that hasn’t stopped ISIS from profiting from the ancient statues and relics, which it has sold on the black market, increasing its wealth.

The United Nations cultural organization accused the ISIS of “cultural cleansing” as part of a global propaganda campaign to recruit foreign fighters and dismantle the fabric of societies in the Middle East.

“Violent extremists don’t destroy heritage as a collateral damage, they target systematically monuments and sites to strike societies at their core”, UNESCO’s director-general Irina Bokova, said at an event at London’s Chatham House. “This strategy seeks to destroy identities by eliminating heritage and cultural markers”.

A vast trafficking of ancient artifacts from Palmyra had begun even before the arrival of ISIS.