Fighters of the Islamic State (IS) took over on Wednesday after fierce battles control over one-third of Palmyra in Syria. From the city Syrian pro-government militias previously evacuated population also deported hundreds of valuable sculptures.
About seized by jihadists around one-third of the city in the province of Homs in central Syria, in Arabic bearing the name of Tadmur, reported the Syrian Observatory of Human Rights based in London. IS attack on Palmyra is part of an offensive to the west led by jihadists, which increases the weight of the battles waged by the Syrian army and militias loyal to President Baszarowi el-Assad. The army and the militias also the north-west suffer losses in the fight against the Islamists.
Director of the Department of Antiquities and Museums Maamun Syrian Abdul Karim said that “small groups” fighters entered the city and called on the Syrian army, the opposition and the international community to rescue located in the UNESCO cultural heritage sites of UNESCO against jihadists.
As told Reuters that the ancient city of some statues were transported to safer places. Palmira is famous for, among others, with colonnaded porticoes and sepulchral sculptures, and is listed on the UNESCO list since 1980. Since 2013. Was pulled on the list of endangered monuments, which is also in Syria Aleppo, Bosra, Damascus, the ancient city in the north and strongholds Krak de Chevaliers and Citadel of Salah Ed-Din.
– Hundreds of sculptures, of which feared that they would be smashed and sold, they are now in a safe place – said Abdul Karim, who last year received the UNESCO prize for saving cultural heritage. – Apprehensive of the museum and the great monuments that you can not move – he added.
In the face of progress Sunni extremists IS France announced on 2 June international meeting in Paris, in order to encompass “the whole situation” in Iraq and Syria, with the participation of US Secretary of State John Kerry. IS in Iraq already destroyed numerous monuments.
Source: CNN Newsource / x-news
In March, Syria has regained more than 120 objects, including gravestones from illegal excavations, stolen in Palmyra, where thieves broke into the tombs and Roman temples. Part of the booty was taken away. According to UNESCO, the necropolis in Palmira robbed more than 20 portraits of the deceased and stone busts of the baby’s head.
According to the United Nations Institute. Training and Research (UNITAR) December satellite image from Syria released 290 cultural heritage sites damaged during the ongoing there the Civil War.
The same Syrian jihadists destroyed the two great Assyrian lions in Ar-Raqqah on the north bank of the Euphrates. IS, which in Ar-Rakce set up his capital, made the destruction of the nearby ancient Semitic Mari (now an archaeological site Tall Hariri), which flourished in the years 2900 to 1759 BC, and also in Dura Europos and Apamea on the Orontes – the main military center of the Seleucids ( archaeological Afamija) and Tell Hammam al-Turkman over Balichem, left-hand tributary of the Euphrates.
This year, according to the Director-General of UNESCO Irina Bokova “pillage and destruction of archaeological sites has reached an unprecedented scale.” With museums in Ar-Rakce and in Deir Atij north of Damascus, one of the largest and richest museums Syrian robbed more than 1,500 items.
In March, the Syrian director Ahmad Dib museums reported that in order to save the monuments museums two years ago sent their collections to magazines. Whereas the objects looted from archaeological sites inscribed on the “red list” which was passed to Interpol. This year, the UN Security Council announced the ban on the trade in antiquities of Syria.
PAP / fc
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