IS Demolishes 2000 Year old temple with Human Bombs

ISIS Demolishes Second 2000-Year-Old Temple in Ancient Syrian City

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Taylor Berman

Filed to: ISIS9/01/15 8:45am

http://gawker.com/isis-demolishes-second-2000-year-old-temple-in-ancient-1727925349

One week after detonating the 2,000-year-old temple of Baalshamin, ISIS has destroyed a second ancient temple in the Syrian city of Palmyra. Tuesday morning, the UN released satellite photos confirming the demolition of the Temple of Bel, which dates back to 32 B.C.

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“We can confirm destruction of the main building of the Temple of Bel as well as a row of columns in its immediate vicinity,” UNOSAT Manager Einar Bjorgo said, according to the Guardian.

The photo above was taken on August 27. It shows, according to the UN, the temple standing, surrounded by a row of columns. The photo below was taken four days later.

Earlier this week, Syria’s antiquities chief Maamoun Abdulkarim called the temple, which was visited by more than 150,000 people a year before the start of the Syrian civil war in 2011, “the most important temple in Syria and one of the most important in the whole Middle East.”

“I feel very sad and I am very pessimistic... for the future of Palmyra,” he toldthe BBC.

Before destroying the Temple of Bel and the Temple of Baalshamin, ISIS fighters beheaded Khaled al-Asaad, an 82-year-old Syrian scholar. Al-Assad, who spent more than 50 years as the head of antiquities in Palmyra, was reportedly killed because he refused to reveal the location of hidden artifacts in the region.

Archeologist Beheaded by ISIS After Refusing to Lead Them to Valuable Artifacts

According to reports, a renowned Syrian scholar was decapitated and his body hung from a Roman column in the ancient ruins of Palmyra, reportedly because he refused to lead ISIS militants to the valuable artifacts he had been charged with looking after.

Khaled al-Asaad, 82, spent more than 50 years as the head of antiquities in Palmyra, home to famous Syrian ruins like, according to the New York Times, the Temple of Ba’al, an ancient theater and a famous 2,000-year-old colonnade.

The militants were apparently searching for antiques which the Syrian government had moved to a “safe place” shortly before ISIS captured the city. Al-Asaad apparently refused to reveal the location during repeated interrogations.

Instead, he was reportedly held captive for a month and summarily executed Tuesday in front of the museum where he worked, according to the director of the Council for Arab-British Understanding, Chris Doyle. Then ISIS militants reportedly hung his body from an ancient Roman column in the center of a square with a poster listing his alleged crimes. Via the Guardian:

Palmyra-based activists circulated an unverified, gruesome image on social media of Asaad’s beheaded body, tied to a pole on a street in the city.

A board in front of the body set out the charges against him, which accused him of loyalty to the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, maintaining contact with senior regime intelligence and security officials and managing Palmyra’s collection of “idols.”

Isis, which follows a puritanical interpretation of Islam, considers maintaining such ancient statues to be apostasy.

“Dozens of people” are said to have witnessed him die to protect the artifacts.

“It was hard for him to see his city under the control of these people, so he insisted on staying there,” Abdalrazzaq Moaz, co-director of cultural heritage initiatives at the American Schools of Oriental Research told the BBC. “I’m sure that he was trying to convince them to not really do damage to the antiquities and the site. So for that he was killed.”