ISIS/ISIL Releases Video Showing Destruction of Iraq's Ancient City of Hatra

Islamic State militants occupying Iraq's ancient city of Hatra have released a video featuring the northern Iraqi city's destruction by sledgehammers, pickaxes and automatic rifle fire.


The video, released Friday, features a militant on a ladder smashing a carved sculpture of a face on the side of a wall. The video then shows a militant using a pick-axe to chop at the feet of a statute, and a militant firing an automatic rifle at carved facial sculptures on city walls.

One of the militants, speaking Arabic with a Gulf accent, declared that the ancient site is being destroyed for being "worshipped instead of God."

Kurdish fighters opposed to ISIL reported last month that radical Islamist militants had begun the destruction of the 2,000-year-old UNESCO World Heritage site. Militants were initially reported to have hacked away at the city's priceless legacy with shovels, and to have taken away the city's collection of ancient gold and silver currencies.

Still under ISIL occupation, it remains unclear just how much damage the ancient city has sustained, although observers fear the worst.

Hatra, lying about 100 kilometers southwest of ISIL-controlled Mosul, was once considered by UNESCO to have offered "exceptional testimony to an entire facet of Assyro-Babylonian civilization."........http://sputniknews.com/middleeast/20150404/1020479147.html#ixzz3WMTUpg6f
4/4/15
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Related:

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• The Islamic State (IS) group on Thursday deployed heavy vehicles and bulldozed the ancient Assyrian city of Nimrud in northern Iraq, the Iraqi government said....

• 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...

• Director-General of UNESCO Irina Bokova demanded Thursday that an emergency meeting of the Security Council of the organization is held immediately...

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• video: La antigua ciudad iraquí de Hatra antes y después del Estado Islámico