Damascus, Syria—The Islamic State group has demolished more treasured monuments in Syria’s ancient Palmyra, a month after recapturing it from government forces, the country’s antiquities chief said.
The news is a fresh blow for the Unesco World Heritage site, which had already been ravaged by the jihadist group during the nine months of control before being expelled in March last year.
“Local sources told us that 10 days ago Daesh destroyed the tetrapylon,” a 16-columned structure that marked one end of the ancient city’s colonnade, Maamoun Abdulkarim told AFP using an Arabic acronym for IS.
Before being forced out of Palmyra in a Russian-backed offensive in March, IS razed world-famous temples and tower tombs at the site.
The UN’s cultural agency reacted with outrage Friday, calling the fresh destruction a “war crime” and “cultural cleansing.”
The tetrapylon, built during the rule of the Roman Emperor Diocletian in the 3rd Century AD, consisted of four sets of four pillars each supporting massive stone cornices.
The monument had suffered considerable damage over the centuries and only one of the 16 pillars was still standing in its original Egyptian pink granite. The rest were cement replicas erected by the antiquities department in 1963.
The Roman amphitheater dates to the 1st Century AD and was used by IS for public executions during its occupation of the city between May 2015 and March last year.
“From the first day, I was bracing myself for a terrible outcome,” Abdulkarim said. “We had already witnessed the terror of the first occupation and frankly I had never thought that the city would be occupied for a second time.”
IS recaptured Palmyra late last year as Syria’s government waged a fierce battle to take back all of the northern city of Aleppo from rebel forces.