ISIS militants have destroyed an ancient monastery in the central Syrian province of Homs, according to activists and pictures published by the militant group.
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On Friday, IS posted photographs on social media sites showing bulldozers destroying the monastery.
A Christian clergyman in Damascus said that “IS” militants also wrecked a church inside the monastery that dates back to the first Christian centuries. The man, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear his relatives still in Qaryatain might be harmed, called on the United Nations to protect Christians and Christian sites.
In March, the group destroyed parts of the ancient Assyrian city of Nimrud in Iraq, using bulldozers and explosives.
A series of recent attacks has stoked fears that IS is accelerating its campaign to demolish and loot heritage sites. IS fighters beheaded 82-year-old Khaled Asaad, who had worked for half a century at preserving the city’s 2,000-year-old ruins.
ASSOCIATED PRESS Islamic State militants standing inside the ancient monastery of the Saint Eliane.
The monastery was captured by jihadists August. 5 and is also where Syrian priest Jacques Mourad was abducted in May, when he prepared to receive residents of nearby Palmyra fleeing an IS advance, according to the AFP. In May, they seized Palmyra, the Roman-era city on the edge of a modern town of the same name. Mourad was known to help both Christians and Muslims and was preparing aid for the arrival of hundreds of refugees from Palmyra. Some of the older captives have been released, but at least 100 people have been taken as hostages to the de facto Isil capital of Raqqa further to the north.
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Among them were 45 women and 19 children, including 11 families, some of whom were on a militants’ wanted list, said the monitor, which tracks the violence of Syria’s civil war through an extensive network of sources on the ground. “We walked through the colonnades, more than a kilometer of attractive colonnades”.
