WORLD_ SYRIA_ Syria’s ancient ruins threatened by ISIS take-over

NEW YORK POST

Syria’s ancient ruins threatened by ISIS take-over By Beckie Strum
May 24, 2015 | 7:09am

ISIS militants raised their black flag over the 2,000-year-old Syrian city of Palmyra, raising fears Saturday that they will destroy some of the Middle East’s finest Roman-era ruins.

“Now the State of the Islamic Caliphate has mounted Palmyra!!” one supporter wrote on Twitter, where ISIS supporters posted pictures of the flag flying over an historic citadel.

ISIS already has begun carrying out its policy of looting and destroying the historic treasures that lie in its path. On Friday, ISIS fighters broke into the city’s museum and destroyed a statue in the foyer.

But the statue, which depicts ancient residents of Palmyra, was a replica. The museum’s most precious artifacts were moved to safety before ISIS arrived, said Maamoun Abdulkarim, head of the Syrian government’s Antiquities and ­Museums Department.

“We feel proud as all the museum’s contents were taken to safe areas,” he said.

But some of the city’s largest relics — such as sarcophagi and the impressive colonnades and temples that have stood for centuries — cannot be moved. They are now at the mercy of ISIS terrorists.

It’s also unlikely the Syrian government salvaged hard-to-move items, such as mummies and tomb carvings dating to the first through the third centuries, according to Amr al-Azm, a former Syrian antiquities official.

Al-Azm was particularly worried about the site’s Temple of Bel because it was once used as a church, making it a probable target for the radicals’ violent iconoclasm.

“It is the poster child of an IS cultural heritage atrocity,” al-Azm told AP.

One saving grace for the castle where ISIS now flies its flag: It was built when Islamists ruled the city centuries ago — a fact that could save it from destruction, al-Azm speculated.

Palmyra, declared a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1980, was declared endangered in 2013 because of the Syrian civil war.

Whatever ISIS doesn’t destroy it will sell on the black market, as the group has done at other archeological sites in Syria and Iraq.

Bombers with the US-led coalition responded to the ISIS advance in Palmyra by striking six anti-aircraft artillery systems and an artillery piece in the area, the Department of Defense announced Saturday.

With Post Wires

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