Militants raze parts of Roman theater
BEIRUT — Islamic State militants have destroyed parts of the second-century Roman amphitheater and an iconic monument known as the Tetrapylon in Syria’s historic town of Palmyra, the government and experts said Friday.
It was the extremist group’s latest attack on world heritage, an act that the U.N. cultural agency called a “war crime.” A Syrian government official said he feared for the remaining antiquities in Palmyra, which IS recaptured last month.
Also on Friday, Turkey’s military said Islamic State killed five Turkish soldiers and wounded nine in a bomb attack in northern Syria.
Turkey is leading Syrian opposition fighters in an offensive against the Islamic State-held town of al-Bab in the Aleppo province, a push that has been bogged down since mid-November. Since its military intervention, Turkey has lost 54 soldiers in Syria, most of them in the al-Bab offensive.
After suffering several setbacks in Syria, Islamic State has gone on the offensive— reclaiming ancient Palmyra in December and launching an attack on a governmentheld city and military air base in Deir el-Zour in eastern Syria.
On Friday, the state news agency SANA said seven civilians were killed when Islamic State shelled a residential area in the city of Deir el-Zour.
However, the militant group remains under pressure in northern Syria from Turkey and U.S-backed Kurdish forces, as well as in neighboring Iraq where Iraqi troops backed by the U.S.-led coalition is fighting to retake the city of Mosul from the militants.
Palmyra, a UNESCO world heritage site that once linked Persia, India, China with the Roman empire and the Mediterranean area, has already seen destruction at the hands of the Islamic State. The ancient town first fell to Islamic State militants in May 2015, when they held it for 10 months. During that time, the militants damaged a number of its relics and eventually emptied it of most of its residents, causing an international outcry.
Palmyra fell again to the group last month, only nine months after a Russian-backed Syrian government offensive was hailed as a significant victory for Damascus.
On Friday, Maamoun Abdulkarim, the head of Syria’s antiquities department, said reports of the recent destruction first trickled out of Palmyra late in December. But satellite images of the damage only became available late Thursday, confirming the destruction.
Abdulkarim said militants have destroyed the facade of the secondcentury theater, along with the Roman-era Tetrapylon — a set of four monuments with four columns each standing at the center of the colonnaded road leading to the theater.
Satellite imagery obtained by the Bostonbased American Schools of Oriental Research, or ASOR, show extensive damage to the Tetrapylon. DigitalGlobe satellite imagery also shows damage to the theater facade.
ASOR said the damage was likely caused by intentional destruction from Islamic State, but the organization was unable to verify the exact cause.
Islamic State extremists have destroyed ancient sites across their self-styled Islamic caliphate in Syria and Iraq, perceiving them as monuments to idolatry.
UNESCO’s directorgeneral, Irina Bokova, said the new destruction in Palmyra amounted to a war crime.
“The Tetrapylon was an architectural symbol of the spirit of the encounter and openness of Palmyra - and this is also one of the reasons why it has been destroyed,” she said in a statement.
Abdulkarim said only two of the 16 columns of the Tetrapylon remain standing.