Heritage under fire
IN the heart of Sanaa, only rubble and straggly palm trees remain where tower houses stood, as the war between Sunni Muslim Arab states and the Houthi movement lays low the Old City’s centuriesold mosques, bathhouses and mudbrick homes.
SANAA: Yemen’s threeyear war has taken a heavy toll on Sanaa’s historic Old City, a dense warren of mosques, bathhouses and 6000 mudbrick houses that date from before the 11th century.
Part of the Old City, a Unesco World Heritage Site, has been razed by bombing. Now only rubble and straggly palm trees remain where unique tower houses once stood.
‘‘Many buildings have been badly damaged and are only skeletons now,’’ Umat alRazzak, manager of traditional housing, told Reuters.
The Old City is dominated by two hues — that of the baked mud bricks and that of the lighter gypsum used for the houses’ ornate arched window frames and external geometric decorations.
Sanaa is said to have been founded two and ahalf millennia ago and in calmer times its old heart bustled with traders and drew tourists.
The ancient city remained an area of relative calm during the 2011 uprising that led to the downfall of late president Ali Abdullah Saleh, but the war between the alliance of Sunni Muslim Arab states and the Iranianaligned Houthi movement that now controls the capital has brought havoc.
Resident Abu HaniElaifa said he remembered clearly the night in September 2015 — the year that a Saudiled coalition intervened in Yemen’s war — when his neighbourhood was hit.
‘‘I was standing outside my house. There were warplanes overhead and then they hit this house while the family was having dinner,’’ he told Reuters, pointing to the rubble that still lies there.
Unesco said it was assessing the impact of the conflict on the Old City and other sites in Yemen, but it was too early to quantify the extent of the damage.
‘‘Unfortunately, it is not a situation unique to Sanaa, as heritage has been affected in all parts of the country,’’ director of the World Heritage Centre Mechtild Roessler told Reuters.
The organisation listed the alQasimi area in Sanaa, the Old City of Saadah and Marib Dam, the archaeological city of Baraqish, Al Qahirah citadel in Taiz and Hadramout’s ancient tombs as being severely damaged. It said the 9thcentury mosque of Bani Matar and Dhamar Museum had been completely destroyed.
‘‘Unesco reiterates the utmost need for all actors in the conflict to avoid destruction of irreplaceable sites, monuments and museum collections in Yemen, which are critical to the identities of local people and of global significance for the history of art, architecture, science and culture.’’
Residents in Sanaa hope the Old City will not be forgotten.
‘‘Protecting this city is an international responsibility, not just a Yemeni responsibility,’’ said Abdullah Ahmed alKabsi, the official in charge of culture in the Houthi administration. — Reuters