The hardline Islamic State group has just destroyed part of an ancient temple in Syria’s Palmyra city, a group monitoring the conflict has said.
The militants targeted the Temple of Bel, a Roman-era structure in the central desert city, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said late on Sunday.
It is the second temple Islamic State has targeted in Palmyra this month. The group detonated explosives in the ancient Baal Shamin temple on August 25, an act that cultural agency Unescohas called a war crime aimed at wiping out a symbol of Syria’s diverse cultural heritage.
The extent of the damage at the Temple of Bel was not known, the Observatory said, citing its contacts on the ground.
Activists on social media also reported the destruction at the temple, one of Palmyra’s most important structures.
Islamic State seized Palmyra in May from government forces in a sudden offensive and is tightly controlling communications in the city, according to activists.
The group, which has proclaimed a caliphate in territory it holds across Syria and Iraq, has regularly demolished monuments it considers sacrilegious as well as carrying out mass killings.
This month the group beheaded the 82-year-old Syrian archaeologist who had looked after Palmyra’s ruins for four decades, and hung his body in public, according to Syria’s antiquities chief.
Meanwhile Canada’s Prime Minister Stephen Harper yesterday the said US-led coalition’s campaign against Islamic State was not doing as well as had been hoped in Syria and parts of Iraq.
US-led coalition’s campaign against Islamic State is not doing as well as had been hoped in Syria and parts of Iraq
Harper also said Canada, one of the nations helping Iraq to fight the group also known as Isis, would need “a long and sustained strategy” with its international partners against IS, which controls large parts of northern and western Iraq.
Around 70 Canadian special forces troops are working with Kurdish peshmerga fighters in northern Iraq. Six Canadian fighter bombers are also attacking Islamic State positions in Iraq and Syria.
“The intervention has had the effect of largely stopping the advance of Isis, particularly in the north of Iraq and to some degree in other parts of Iraq and Syria, not maybe as much as we’d liked,” Harper told reporters during an event on Canada’s election campaign. Polls are indicating that Harper’s ruling Conservatives are trailing the left-leaning New Democrats, who have promised to withdraw Canada’s forces from the coalition if elected in government.
“To protect our country we are going to have to have a long and sustained strategy and work with our international partners and that is what we are doing,” said Harper, who accuses his political rivals of being too soft in the fight against terror.