This picture, released late Thursday by an Islamic State militant-affiliated website, shows a bulldozer destroying the Saint Eliane Monastery near the town of Qaryatain, Syria.
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The developments have stoked concerns that IS may be accelerating its campaign to destroy and loot non-Islamic and pre-Islamic heritage sites inside the vast swathes of Iraq and Syria now controlled by the militant group.
Earlier this month in Qaryatain, ISIL abducted at least 230 people, including 60 Christians from a church, after capturing the town after heavy fighting with the Syrian army, the Syrian Observatory said.
So far, the city’s most famous sites have been left intact, though there are reports IS has mined them, and the group reportedly destroyed a famous statue of a lion outside the Palmyra museum in late June.
Twitter accounts linked with ISIS allegedly posted pictures of the destruction, according to RT, claiming the site was destroyed because it was used for worshipping a god that wasn’t Allah.
In July, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) warned that Daesh militants were looting ancient sites across Iraq and Syria on an “industrial scale”.
The monastery and attached church of St Elian was named after a third century Christian from Homs who was killed by his father, a Roman officer, for refusing to renounce his faith. He said the monastery was founded in 432. 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. The fate of the other 70 hostages is still unknown.
One of a major pilgrimage site for Syria’s Christian community, the Mar Elian monastery drew thousands of visitors for its yearly festivities in honor of Saint Elian. Based on Edward, Mourad sheltered each Muslim and Christian Syrians fleeing the preventing elsewhere in Homs province.
Palmyra has not been subjected to widespread pillaging, but the militants placed mines throughout the UNESCO site in June.
Palmyra has remained largely intact, however Bokova stated “we all know that a number of the destruction is beginning”.
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“The drama … and the tragedy, I think is that we don’t know what will happen tomorrow”, she said.
