Militants with the Islamic State group, which started pillaging the famed ancient Roman ruins in Palmyra, Syria, when taking control of the city in 2015, won’t stop doing so until all of its historical treasures are reduced to rubble, the Russian Defense Ministry said in a statement Monday.
Visual evidence provided by an unmanned Russian aerial vehicle shows that “an upsurge in truck movement” near the ancient ruins point to plans by the organization known as ISIS to destroy more of the UNESCO World Heritage Site before being forced to retreat the city due to advancements made by the Syrian armed forces, according to Russian news agency TASS.
“This indicates that Daesh (ISIS) wants to bring in explosives to deal maximum damage to the remaining architectural relics before they leave,” the statement said.
ISIS has also destroyed other sites containing national archeological treasures in Syria and Iraq, as the militants consider them monuments to idolatry that act against the traditional teachings of Islam. The head of UNESCO, Irina Bokova, has called the terror group’s vandalization of the ruins in Palmyra ruins that date back to the first and second centuries a “war crime.”
The same video footage from the Russian aerial vehicle additionally shows the tremendous amount of destruction ISIS has already done to the ruins, including the obliteration of the façade of a Roman theater that was famously adorned with Tetrapylons columns dating back to 270 AD. Compared to photos of the theater taken on June 6, 2016, in which it was largely intact, the Russian video footage shows the façade reduced to a pile of stones while only two of the original 16 columns can still be seen standing, according to CNN.
Other ISIS members inundated the streets of Palmyra in December after the Syrian army and its allies successfully retook the major rebel stronghold in Aleppo, Syria, and have deliberately laid waste to its countless archeological treasures since.
The news comes years after Palmyra was nicknamed the “Pearl of the Desert” for being a cultural and industrial hub between the Roman empire and the Far East.
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