Updated 3.53 pm
JIHADISTS FROM THE Islamic State blew up a 2,000-year-old temple in Syria on Sunday, continuing the group’s attacks on heritage sites.
Famed for its well-preserved Greco-Roman ruins, Palmyra was seized from government forces in May, prompting concerns IS might destroy it as it has done with heritage sites in parts of Syria and Iraq under its control.
Until Sunday, most of Palmyra’s best-known sites had been left intact, though there were reports IS had mined them and the group reportedly destroyed a well-known statue of a lion outside the city’s museum.
Islamic State have released a series of photographs that they they say demonstrates how the blew up the site.
In the images, militants can be seen carrying the explosives into the site and placing them beside the walls and the columns of the ancient temple before they are detonated.
The images have not been independently verified but were released like other group propaganda and carried a logo it often used in the city of Palmyra.
Tourists had called Palmyra “a gem”, “impressive” and “an amazing experience”.
This is what will now be lost - the ancient temple of Baal Shamin.
Palmyra, in its entirety, is also under threat. And, for the moment, is a no-go zone.
The head of UNESCO, Irina Bokova, said last Friday that Islamic State extremists in Syria and Iraq are engaged in the “most brutal, systematic” destruction of ancient sites since World War II — a stark warning that came hours after militants demolished the St. Elian Monastery, which housed a fifth-century tomb and served as a major pilgrimage site. The monastery was in the town of Qaryatain in central Syria.
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