UN says IS Palmyra destruction a new ‘war crime’
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THE UN yesterday led condemnation of attacks by Islamic State jihadists on two sites in Syria’s ancient city of Palmyra, calling the destruction a “war crime” and “cultural cleansing.”
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.
IS recaptured Palmyra, a UNESCO World Heritage site, from government forces on December 11 and the new devastation reportedly occurred earlier this month.
Syria’s antiquities chief Maamoun Abdulkarim said in Damascus earlier yesterday that local sources said IS destroyed Palmyra’s tetrapylon monument, while satellite images showed damage to the facade of the city’s Roman amphitheater.
The tetrapylon, built during the rule of the Roman Emperor Diocletian in the third century, 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 erected in 1963.
The Roman amphitheater dates to the first century and was used by IS for public executions during its occupation.
The jihadist group had already ravaged the city during the nine months it held the site before being forced out of Palmyra in a Russian-backed offensive last March.
Moscow deplored the new destruction. President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov called it “a real tragedy from the point of view of cultural and historical heritage.”
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