Daesh destroys human heritage
COALITION JETS HIT AREA WHERE 220 ASSYRIANS HAVE BEEN SEIZED
Daesh terrorists in northern Iraq have destroyed a collection of priceless statues and sculptures dating back to the ancient Assyrian era, according to a video published online.
The Daesh video showed men attacking the artefacts, some of them identified as antiquities from the 7th century BC, with sledgehammers or drills, saying they were symbols of idolatry.
The terrorists shoved statues off their plinths, shattering them on the floor, and one man applied a power tool to a large winged bull.
Lamia Al Gailani, an Iraqi archaeologist and associate fellow at London-based Institute of Archaeology, said Daesh had wreaked incalculable damage. “It’s not only Iraq’s heritage: it’s the whole world’s. It’s human heritage,” she said.
Meanwhile, a US-led alliance launched air strikes against Daesh terrorists in an area of northeast Syria where they are now estimated to have abducted at least 220 Assyrian Christians this week, a group monitoring the war reported.
Daesh has staged mass killings of religious minorities, as well as Sunnis who refuse to swear allegiance to the ‘caliphate’ it has declared in parts of Syria, Iraq and other areas of the Arab world.
Its fighters were shown beheading 21 Egyptian Coptic Christians in Libya recently. Last August, Daesh killed or enslaved hundreds of Iraq’s Yazidis, whom it considers devil worshippers, just over the nearby frontier in Iraq.
The terrorists have previously used kidnappings to trade captives for their own captured fighters. It was not clear if they planned to do the same this time. –Reuters
Hardline Islamist militants in northern Iraq have destroyed a collection of priceless statues and sculptures dating to the ancient Assyrian era, according to a video published online.
The Daesh video showed men attacking the artefacts, some of them identified as antiquities from the 7th century BC, with sledgehammers or drills, saying they were symbols of idolatry.
“The Prophet [PBUH] ordered us to get rid of statues and relics, and his companions did the same when they conquered countries after him,” an unidentified man said in the video.
The articles destroyed appeared to come from an antiquities museum in the northern city of Mosul, which was overrun by Daesh last June, a former employee at the museum said.
The militants shoved statues off their plinths, shattering them on the floor, and one man applied an electric drill to a large winged bull.
The video showed a large room strewn with dismembered statues, and Islamic songs played in the background.
Incalculable damage
Lamia Al Gailani, an Iraqi archaeologist and associate fellow at London-based Institute of Archaeology, said the militants had wreaked incalculable damage.
“It’s not only Iraq’s heritage: it’s the whole world’s. It’s human heritage,” she said
“They are priceless, unique. It’s unbelievable. I don’t want to be Iraqi any more,” she said, comparing the damage to the dynamiting of the Bamiyan Buddhas by the Afghan Taliban in 2001.
As well as Assyrian statues of winged bulls from Nineveh and Nimrud, Lamia said the Daesh hardliners appeared to destroy statues from Hatra, a Hellenistic-Parthian city in northern Iraq dating back around 2,000 years.
“Muslims, these relics you see behind me are idols that were worshipped other than God in the past centuries,” the unidentified man in the Daesh video said.