A video was posted online on Saturday purporting to show Islamic State terrorists destroying the ancient Assyrian city of Nimrud, in Iraq. Reuters reported last month that Islamic State fighters had looted Nimrud in one of their several assaults on some of the world's greatest archaeological and cultural treasures. If the video is accurate, Islamic State militants hammered, bulldozed and ultimately blew up parts of the ancient Iraqi Assyrian city of Nimrud, destroying a site dating back to the 13th century BCE. The seven-minute video, posted late Saturday, shows bearded militants using sledgehammers, jackhammers and saws to take down huge alabaster reliefs depicting Assyrian kings and deities. A bulldozer brings down walls, while militants fill barrels with explosives and later destroy three separate areas of the site in massive explosions. "God has honored us in the Islamic State to remove all of these idols and statutes worshipped instead of Allah in the past days," one militant says in the video. Standing in front of explosives rigged to a stone frieze, another man said: "We remove the signs of polytheism and spread monotheism in every single territory we acquire. By God, we will destroy the signs of polytheism and we will destroy the graves and shrines of the rejectionists [Shiites] in their homes. We will smash the [Christian] crosses and we will demolish the Black House [White House] in the middle of America, the home of infidels." The militants have been destroying ancient relics they say promote idolatry that violate their fundamentalist interpretation of Islamic law, including the ancient Iraqi city of Hatra, a UNESCO World Heritage site. Authorities also believe they've sold others on the black market to fund their aggression. Some of the figures in the video released Saturday at Nimrud appeared to have rebar, ribbed bars of steels designed to reinforce concrete that are a technique of modern building. An Iraqi Antiquities Ministry official, speaking Sunday on condition of anonymity as he wasn't authorized to talk to journalists, said all the items at Nimrud were authentic. The Assyrians first rose around 2,500 BCE and at one point ruled over a realm stretching from the Mediterranean coast to what is present-day Iran. They left dozens of palaces and temples decorated with huge reliefs mainly depicting their kings' military campaigns and conquests, hunting lions and making sacrifices to the gods. Many of Nimrud's most famous surviving monuments were removed years ago by archaeologists, including colossal Winged Bulls which are now in London's British Museum and hundreds of precious stones and pieces of gold which were moved to Baghdad. But ruins of the ancient city remain at the northern Iraqi site, which has been excavated by a series of experts since the 19th century. British archaeologist Max Mallowan and his wife, crime writer Agatha Christie, worked at Nimrud in the 1950s. Islamic State, which rules a self-declared caliphate in parts of Iraq and Syria, promotes a fiercely purist interpretation of Sunni Islam, which seeks its inspiration from early Islamic history. It rejects religious shrines of any sort and condemns Iraq's majority Shiite Muslims as heretics.
Credit: Reuters
The destruction at Nimrud, located near the militant-held city of Mosul, follows other attacks on antiquities carried out by the group, which now holds a third of Iraq and neighboring Syria as a self-declared caliphate. The attacks have horrified archaeologists and U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who last month called the destruction at Nimrud "a war crime."
