ISIS beheads prominent Syrian archeologist in ancient Palmyra, hangs his body

The terrorist group controls around one-third of both Syria and Iraq and established self-claimed Caliphate in Raqqa.

After releasing showing its members destroying artifacts with hammers and drills in a museum in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul and using explosives to wreck other sites, the dreaded extremist group ISIS, drew worldwide condemnation.

Islamic State militants publicly beheaded a leading scholar of antiquities in the Syrian city of Palmyra on Tuesday.

Activists said that the killing took place in public, where dozens of people stood witnesses.

Asaad had been detained and interrogated for over a month by the Sunni Muslim armed fighters, Abdulkarim said.

According to reports, a renowned Syrian scholar was decapitated and his body hung from a Roman column in the ancient ruins of Palmyra, reportedly because he refused to lead ISIS militants to the valuable artifacts he had been charged with looking after.

Amr al-Azm, a former antiquities official who ran Syria’s science and conservation laboratories and is now associate professor of Middle Eastern history at Shawnee State University in Ohio, US, told The Independent that in many ways Mr al-Asaad “was Mr Palmyra”. Militants then hung his body from a Roman column at an archeological site in Palmyra.

Speaking to the AP, Khalil Hariri, Mr. Asaad’s son-in-law who works at Palmyra’s archaeological department, expressed shock at the senseless killing: “Asaad was a treasure for Syria and the world”, he said.

Dr Abdulkarim told the news agency that the militants crucified Mr Asaad’s body “on colonnades in central Palmyra”.

Asaad was in charge of the site for four decades before retiring in 2003, after which time he worked as an expert with the antiquities and museums department.

The IS stormed Palmyra and its ancient part last May, prompting Syrian troops to wage a counter-offensive for the recapture of that city. On Tuesday, they brought him in a van to a square packed with shoppers. A statue of a lion displayed in front of Palmyra’s museum was destroyed in July.

Before he retired, Al-Assad was also the chief overseer of the Palmyra ancient ruins and the person who authorized researchers who wanted to spend more than five-years studying the city, access to its treasures.

“But they will not succeed”.