Irina Bokova said: "We cannot stay silent. The deliberate destruction of cultural heritage constitutes a war crime, and I call on all political and religious leaders in the region to stand up against this new barbarity."
Islamic State fighters have looted and bulldozed the ancient city, the Iraqi government said, in their latest assault on some of the world's greatest archaeological and cultural treasures.
A tribal source from the nearby city of Mosul told Reuters the ultra-radical Sunni Islamists, who dismiss Iraq's pre-Islamic heritage as idolatrous, had pillaged the 3,000-year-old site on the banks of the Tigris river.
The assault against Nimrud came just a week after the release of a video showing Islamic State forces smashing museum statues and carvings in Mosul, the city they seized along with much of northern Iraq last June.
"Daesh terrorist gangs continue to defy the will of the world and the feelings of humanity," Iraq's tourism and antiquities ministry said, referring to Islamic State by its Arabic acronym.
"In a new crime in their series of reckless offences they assaulted the ancient city of Nimrud and bulldozed it with heavy machinery, appropriating the archaeological attractions dating back 13 centuries BC," it said.
Nimrud, about 30km south of Mosul, was built around 1250 BC.
Four centuries later it became capital of the neo-Assyrian empire - at the time the most powerful state on earth, extending to modern-day Egypt, Turkey and Iran.
A local tribal source said: "Islamic State members came to the Nimrud archaeological city and looted the valuables in it and then they proceeded to level the site to the ground."
"There used to be statues and walls as well as a castle that Islamic State has destroyed completely."
Many of its most famous surviving monuments were removed years ago by archaeologists, including colossal Winged Bulls which are now in London's British Museum and hundreds of precious stones and pieces of gold which were moved to Baghdad.
But the ruins of the ancient city remain at the northern Iraqi site, which has been excavated by a series of experts since the 19th century..........................http://www.rte.ie/news/2015/0306/684984-nimrud/
6/3/15
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Related:
- Outcry as Islamic State bulldozers 'wreck' Nimrud, Iraq...
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- ------ Iran offers to protect Iraqi artifacts after militant attack
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The destruction of historic artefacts in Iraq by Islamic State (IS) militants is a war crime, the head of the UN agency for culture, Unesco, has said...
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L’Etat islamique détruit le patrimoine irakien: l’Unesco dénonce un «crime de guerre»...
ReplyDeleteLe groupe Etat islamique (EI) a commencé jeudi à détruire les ruines assyriennes de Nimroud, quelques jours après la diffusion par les djihadistes d’une vidéo montrant la destruction de sculptures préislamiques inestimables dans le nord de l’Irak, a annoncé le ministère du Tourisme.
L’EI a « pris d’assaut la cité historique de Nimroud et a commencé à la détruire avec des bulldozers », a dit le ministère du Tourisme et des Antiquités sur sa page officielle Facebook.
Un responsable des Antiquités a confirmé ces informations, précisant que les opérations de destruction avaient commencé jeudi après les prières de la mi-journée. Des camions, qui ont pu être utilisés pour dérober des pièces archéologiques, ont par ailleurs été aperçus sur le site, a-t-il ajouté. « Jusqu’à présent, nous ne pouvons pas mesurer l’ampleur des dégâts », a dit ce responsable sous couvert d’anonymat................http://www.lesoir.be/813691/article/actualite/monde/2015-03-06/l-etat-islamique-detruit-patrimoine-irakien-l-unesco-denonce-un-crime-guerre
6/3/15