Maamoun Abdulkarim, Syria’s director-general of antiquities and museums, said that sources in Palmyra informed him that ISIS members rigged the temple with large quantities of explosives and detonated them.
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Following the destruction of a almost 2,000-year-old historic ruin in Syria – an act the United Nations cultural organization called a war crime – ISIS followed up with images of how it blasted the site.
In wrecking the Temple of Baalshamin in Palmyra over the weekend Islamic State militants destroyed a major part of the sprawling complex of stone buildings that still rise majestically from the desert 20 centuries after the city’s heyday. Then an image shows a grey plume of smoke rising above the temple from a distance, and then an image of the temple reduced to a pile of rocks. Reuters could not independently verify the pictures. A resident of Palmyra had told the AP the temple was destroyed on Sunday, a month after the group’s militants booby-trapped it with explosives.
The temple was built almost 2,000 years ago and UNESCO had described it as a symbol of Syria’s historical cultural diversity, which it says Islamic State is seeking to obliterate.
The demolition of Baalshamin temple came few days after the ISIS militants beheaded 83-year-old Palmyra antiquities chief Khalid al-Asaad publicly and hung up his headless body on a column at a public square. It has a history of carrying out mass killings in places it captures and of demolishing monuments it considers pagan and idolatrous.
The photos were posted on the usual Internet photo-sharing sites the group uses to distribute its propaganda.
It has killed people it accused of being government supporters in Palmyra’s ancient amphitheatre, according to activists.
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Palmyra ancient ruins are a UNESCO World Heritage site and IS’s capture of the town on May 21 raised concerns the group would lay waste to it as it has done with heritage sites under its control elsewhere.
