The Islamic State group has beheaded the 82-year-old former antiquities director for the ancient city of Palmyra, Syria’s antiquities chief and a monitor said.
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Among other accomplishments, he wrote volumes of scholarly works on Palmyra, and he teamed up with Western archaeological missions to excavate and research the city’s ancient tombs and temples.
Syria’s antiquities chief Maamoun Abdelkarim told AFP that Assaad was executed by the jihadist group on Tuesday afternoon in Palmyra, in central Homs province.
City officials in Palmyra, which was captured from Syrian government forces in May, moved hundreds of ancient statues and treasures from the town’s museum out of concern that ISIS militants, in keeping with their puritanical rejection of “idol” worship, would destroy or sell them.
Photos purporting to show Mr al-Assaad’s body tied to a post in Palmyra were circulated online by ISIS supporters.
Following more than frou decades as the head of antiquities in Palmyra, the scholar’s protection of the Roman-era site led to a brutal death in his hometown.
“The beheading of Khaled Al-Asaad is a gesture that provokes horror”, Franceschini said in a statement released on Wednesday.
Mr Asaad was “one of the most important pioneers in Syrian archaeology in the 20th century”, Mr Abdulkarim said.
The killing of Asaad, confirmed by Syrian activists, marks not just another attack by the Islamist militants on the region’s vast archaeological heritage but also an assault on those who look after it.
In June, ISIL blew up two ancient shrines in Palmyra that were not part of its Roman-era structures but which the fighters reportedly regarded as pagan and sacrilegious. The statue, discovered in 1975, had stood at the gates of the town museum, and had been placed inside a metal box to protect it from damage. On Tuesday, they brought him in a van to a square packed with shoppers.
“Their systematic campaign seeks to take us back into pre-history”. They were shot dead by young members of the militant group, armed with pistols.
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Speaking in Washington, State Department spokesman John Kirby said, “The United States condemns in the strongest possible terms this murder… of a man who dedicated his life to preserving Syria’s cultural treasures”.
