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SYRIA BELIEVES IT needs just five years to restore the ancient ruins of Palmyra damaged by the Islamic State jihadist group.
“If we have UNESCO’s approval, we will need five years to restore the structures damaged or destroyed by IS,” the country’s antiquities chief Maamoun Abdulkarim told AFP.
Archaeologists rushed to the site to assess the damage wreaked by the Islamic State group, after it was ousted by the Syrian army in a bloody battle over the wekend.
President Bashar al-Assad hailed the victory as “important” as Damascus reportedly dispatched experts to check the damage on the UNESCO world heritage site.
Much still in tact
An AFP correspondent inside Palmyra said some monuments, including the iconic Temple of Bel, lay in pieces almost a year after jihadists seized the site, but much of the ancient city was intact.
Residential neighbourhoods in the adjacent modern town, where 70,000 people lived before the war, were deserted and damage there was widespread, the correspondent said.
Syrian soldiers, pro-government militiamen and Russian fighters strolled among the ruins in awe after seizing the city on Sunday, while regime troops kicked around a football in the middle of a street.
The Islamic State group sparked a global outcry when they started destroying Palmyra’s treasured monuments, which they consider idolatrous, after taking the city in May 2015.
Syria’s antiquities chief said the priceless artefacts had survived better than feared from a campaign of destruction UNESCO described as a “war crime”.
“We were expecting the worst. But the landscape, in general, is in good shape,” Maamoun Abdulkarim told AFP from Damascus.
We could have completely lost Palmyra… The joy I feel is indescribable.
‘Lost to science’
Historian of the ancient world Maurice Sartre told AFP:
One mustn’t forget that only around 15 to 20 percent of Palmyra had actually been excavated, and so there was an enormous amount yet to discover.
“All the tombs we hadn’t excavated and have now been totally pillaged are lost to science forever.”
IS had used Palmyra’s ancient theatre as a venue for public executions and also murdered the city’s 82-year-old former antiquities chief.
The Syrian army said the city would now serve as a base to “broaden operations” against IS, including in its stronghold of Raqa and Deir Ezzor further east.
At least 400 IS fighters were killed in the battle for the city, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. On the government side, 188 troops and militiamen were killed.
“That’s the heaviest losses that IS has sustained in a single battle since its creation” in 2013, the director of the Britain-based monitoring group, Rami Abdel Rahman, told AFP.
The ancient city, northeast of Damascus, drew some 150,000 tourists a year before Syria’s civil war and is known to Syrians as the Pearl of the Desert.
Syrian state television broadcast footage from inside Palmyra’s famed museum, showing jagged pieces of sculptures on the ground and blanketed in dust.
Gains against IS
IS is under growing pressure from Syrian and Iraqi forces determined to retake bastions of its self-proclaimed “caliphate”.
On Thursday, the Iraqi army announced the launch of an offensive to eventually recapture second city Mosul, held by the jihadists since June 2014.
Russian forces, which intervened in support of longtime ally Assad last September, were heavily involved in the Palmyra offensive despite a major drawdown last week.
Russian warplanes carried out 40 combat sorties around Palmyra in the last 24 hours, striking 117 “terrorist targets” and killing 80 IS fighters, Moscow’s defence ministry said yesterday.
Putin telephoned Assad to congratulate the Syrian leader, adding that “successes such as the liberation of Palmyra would be impossible without Russia’s support,” a Kremlin spokesman said.
Assad said the victory was “fresh proof of the efficiency of the Syrian army and its allies in fighting terrorism”.
IS and its jihadist rival, the al-Qaeda-affiliated Al-Nusra Front, are not party to a ceasefire in force across Syria since 27 February.
The truce has brought relative quiet to many areas across Syria, where more than 270,000 have been killed and millions had fled their homes in the last five years.
The Observatory for Human Rights said on Sunday that 363 civilians had been killed since the truce went into effect – the lowest monthly toll in four years.
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Do these surveys not take into account the big bills? Such as gas, oil, petrol or electricity.
They are the bills that keep me in the red and they are not going down!
And mortgage bill too! Doh..
The CPI is down 0.4% for prices in November however we are still 0.8% above what prices were at this point last year. Here’s the full report.
Cheers Sean.
The cost of housing, heating, electricity and other fuels have risen.
I don’t really care if a bag of apples went down by 5cent when my gas bill is higher than I ever remember.
its not going down people are spending less because thy don’t have it. end of.
Cost of living going down WHERE
Wages going south aswell with increased prsi…
Wait until the property tax hits in!!!!…I cant believe people are moaning about a €10 a month for some kids allownace….ITS THE PROPERTY TAX WHICH IS GOING TO DO THE MOST DAMAGE TO FAMILIES….WAKE UP PEOPLE!!! AND START TO PROTEST THIS UNJUST TAX!!…you are going to get hit with more tax in water charges as well… & pretty soon they will own YOU and your FAMILY and your HOUSE if you dont do anything about it….WAKE UP!!
Nope children’s allowance is bigger for me. 3 kids means €38 per month or 450 odd a year. That’s on top of the 480 I lost last year.
Actually the prsi change is costing nearly as much as the property tax (avg figure).
The price of tobacco fell by 20% on Moore street last year
black market fags
55 euro for 200
Irish 98euro for 200
Has the Author of this article been asleep for the past six years??
Thomas these people are not asleep its called deception they keep telling you that it is raining while they p—- all over yuo
No, the author of this article has not been asleep for the last six years. (Though, on average, I’d say if you added it up I’ve been asleep for a little under two years out of the last six.)
Rubbish
I must be living in another country ! Every time I go to the shops for food there are price increases abet for only a few cents at a time . But added up on a lot of products this all adds up ! There are of course ‘special offers’ but in my experience the cut of these prices is added to different products around the store !
I don’t know what the idiots who did this survey are living on – fresh air? I wasn’t asked…no way has the cost gone down!?!?
Leave it out!!!!!!
Highest purchasing power… That means given our net tax income and cost of living we are materially better off than all of Europe excluding Luxembourg and the Netherlands… Interesting and no wonder they’re annoyed with this constant whining how we are squeezed to the limit….we must seem like a nation of hypocrites.
the cost of living has gone down and diminished to an all time low in this generations time
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