UNESCO’s director-general, Irina Bokova, on Monday said the destruction of the 2,000-year-old Arc showed that the Daesh “extremists are terrified by history and culture”.
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Maamoun Abdulkarim, Syria’s antiquities chief, said witnesses in Palmyra had confirmed that the Arch of Triumph “was destroyed yesterday (Sunday)”.
The Arch of Triumph, built by Septimius Severus between 193 and 211 AD has been described by the United Nations cultural agency, UNESCO as a masterpiece of civil architecture and urban planning.
Twelve civilians were killed in strikes in the Al Ahmar valley east of Palmyra, according to Khaled, an antigovernment activist from the city who is living in Turkey and said he was in contact with residents of the area.
Terror outfit ISIS on 4 October 2015 destroyed the 2000-year-old Arch of Triumph in the ancient Syrian city of Palmyra.
“It is now wanton destruction… their acts of vengeance are no longer ideologically driven because they are now blowing up buildings with no religious meaning”, he added. Since then, the group has destroyed two of its well-preserved ancient temples and other relics.
Palmyra, registered as a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1980, fell to the fundamentalist group in May.
“About 20 units of medium T-55 tanks, which were earlier seized by the militants from the Syrian army, have been destroyed [in the strikes]”, as well as three multiple rocket launchers.
In an interview with Russian Federation Today’s World’s Apart programme, Ms Bokoba decried the “systematic destruction” of important historical sites, “combined [with] industrial scale illicit archeological sites, looting of archeological sites and trafficking”.
ISIL’s self-declared “caliphate”, states this type of old tools tell people about worship and says they’re exterminating these guys as stage of their personal eliminate of neo-paganism. “They want to raze it completely”, the country’s antiquities director Maamun Abdulkarim told AFP.
Heritage sites have been damaged constantly since Syria’s war began.
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Before the capture of the city, Syrian officials said they had moved hundreds of ancient statues to safe locations.
