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Zain Karam / Reuters
A damaged ceiling is pictured in Bab Antakya district of Aleppo, Syria, on October 2, 2012. Aleppo's Old City is one of several World Heritage Sites in Syria that are considered at risk.
Editor's note: This story includes a correction.
Updated at 9:15 a.m. ET: Even as civil war tears the nation apart, it seems Syrians can agree about one thing: The need to protect the country’s antiquities and World Heritage Sites that represent thousands of years of human history.
Rebel fighters and ordinary citizens are risking their lives to document the damage being done to Syria’s ancient treasures and museums, according to Western monitors.
Now Bashar Assad's regime has joined in. Maamoun Abdul-Karim, director general of antiquities and museums, has launched a campaign, called "MySyria," (in Arabic) asking communities to help protect the nation’s cultural heritage from the civil strife.
All six World Heritage Sites have now suffered damage as the conflict widens, according to Emma Cunliffe, a volunteer monitor for the non-profit Global Heritage Fund.
One of oldest cities
Destruction includes heavy looting of temples and tombs in the trade city of Palmyra and a devastating fire in the medieval souk in Aleppo, one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in human history.
World heritage body UNESCO has led the outpouring of international concern. Aleppo dates back to the 10th century B.C. and the present city is deemed to have "Outstanding Universal Value," by UNESCO.
Reuters, file
Demonstrators protest against Syria's President Bashar Assad in the ancient city of Palmyra on November 18, 2011.
"Pictures and video evidence gathered by people on the ground shows the extent of the damage and prove that none of these sites are now safe from the conflict," said Cunliffe, a postgraduate student at Britain's Durham University.
'Emergency red list' targets Syria's looted treasures
Looting, which led to the theft of many of Iraq's national treasures during the conflict that deposed Saddam Hussein, is also a risk in Syria.
"Large gangs of men turned up at Iraqi sites, totally overwhelming the protection, and looted on a vast scale. If that starts to happen in Syria there will be problems because there's little that can be done about it,” Cunliffe said.
More Syria coverage from NBC News
She said each side in the conflict blamed the other for damage to ancient buildings, but it was not easy to verify the claims.
Cunliffe said many people in Syria made films showing the damage being done to ancient sites.
She said that one man “who uploaded most of the videos of the damage to the citadel of Qal'at al-Madiq in January to April stopped uploading when the government took the citadel/village in April. I have assumed the worst.”
Osman Orsal / Reuters
A look back at the violence that has overtaken the country
New 'intelligence' body set to fight illicit trade in world's priceless treasures
Abdul-Karim hopes to encourage Syrians to prevent the war from causing permanent damage.
“The war in Syria has hit ... all aspects of life, including antiquities considered the common heritage of all Syrians, regardless of their thoughts or political alliances, whether loyalists or opposition,” Abdul-Karim told news website Al Akhbar following the campaign's launch.
He said there was also evidence of antiquities being smuggled out of the country.
'A loss to human civilization'
Dan Thompson, director of global projects at the Global Heritage Fund, said that there was little that could be done until the fighting stopped.
A Cluster Bomb reportedly dropped by Syrian government warplanes has killed up to 10 children as they played in a village on the outskirts of Damascus. Warning: There are distressing images. ITV's Bill Neely reports.
“The continuing damage and destruction of World Heritage Sites and other national antiquities in Syria during the present conflict is not only a loss to human civilization, but also greatly reduces the socio-economic potential these sites offer to local communities and the country as a whole,” he said in a statement.
"At present, unfortunately, the most anyone can do is to closely monitor and publicize the devastation … and plead for both sides to respect the country’s cultural heritage, as UNESCO has done."
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This isn't surprising in a war zone but it is truly a tragic waste of centuries of human history that cannot be replaced. I've been wondering about this but no one will really know for sure what's been destroyed and to what extent the damages are until this terrible civil war is over.
"Destruction includes heavy looting of temples and tombs in the trade city of Palmyra and a devastating fire in the medieval souk in Aleppo, one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in human history."
Saudi inspired Sunni Islamic madness has crossed tolerable limits.
Syrian rebels are assisted by Sunni killer gangs like al Qaida, Salaffi, MB and others.
Though Assad is one of the best ME Muslim rulers, Sunni hating and killer gangs can't tolerate minority sect leader.
At the same time, they are not permitting majority Shiites to have their Shiite ruler in Bahrain.
In Afghanistan, Taliban could not tolerate Buddha's statue in Bamiyan.
However, we should keep away from the battles of seventh century Sunni Islamic religious Nazis and tenth century Shiite Islamic religious Nazis.
Let Shiites and Sunnis battle to their hearts content on whose Allah is greater.
To reduce economic miseries, remove sanctions on Iranian oil.
You do not know who is with whom but jumping out there like you do. Just why would you want Iranian Oil Released? You are either a Troll that thinks he's smart or just a Troll.
It is an interesting time that so many individuals (billions) can watch the evolution
of the species in near real time events. One day we’ll be able to monitor the collective emotions, where the exuberance, apathy and fears can be accessed.
Syria had many pre-Islamic civilizations, so did the entire levant. Palmyria was practically a capital of the region. In Lebanon there's the amazing ruins at Baalbek. Jordan is full of magnificent ruins also, in places like Jerash, Petra, Aman. Even in Saudia Arabia, the ancient Arab Nabatean town of Med'ain Sulleh bears testimony to the extent of ancient civilization. In fact the beautiful Arab script is a direct descendant of the ancient Nabatean alphabet. You can see the pre-Islamic examples in carved relief above the door entrances of the ruined facades at Med'ain Sulleh.
The Islamic world needs to realize that Islam began as a syncretic a cult and only a cult. It is a revision of the Sabian faith with influences from Christianity, and Judaism. The early followers were so enamoured that they tried to erase the record of previous civilizations so they could claim that there was no civilization before Islam. That is why revering pre-Islamic tombs or monuments is considered Haram.
There was civilization before Islam, and it was amazing, perhaps even more amazing. Open your eyes, Islam is a 7th century cult. Don't be brain washed with the fear of divine rejection for thinking the truth. Looking deep into the past helps build a better future. It's time to realize that the cult of Islam is the real problem in the Islamic world.
This reminds me of the destruction of many beautiful buildings in cities all across Europe during WWII.
Every time one of these beautiful treasures is lost due to war, we lose a piece of ourselves. It's sad to see this happen because these wackos don't realize that these pieces of history are priceless. There ARE gorgeous places in the Middle East that I'd love to see, like the Pyramids of Egypt; but these countries have been hijacked by Islamist lunatics. What a shame.
Jonathan, thanks for mentioning the statues and their destruction due to the taliban. Good example. These towering monuments are also a piece of history that cannot be replaced and had survived for centuries. This link is one of my favorites regarding the statues. The photos are breathtaking.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-south-asia-12674541
“In a time of universal deceit telling the truth is a revolutionary act.” ~George Orwell
NBC claims....Rebel fighters and ordinary citizens are risking their lives to document the damage being done to Syria’s ancient treasures....
Right once again the Corporate Controlled Main Stain Media spews forth its disinformation and propaganda nonsense trying to start yet another "Not War".
Rebels Forces (Al Qaeda) are "Documenting" the death & destruction and then blaming the Syrian Army for the Crimes they commit!
Don't believe it....then watch this "Rebel" video and learn....
http://www.infowars.com/leaked-video-showing-free-syrian-army-blowing-up-a-mosque-to-accuse-the-syrian-army-of-doing-it/
Say what you will but these Al Qaeda Rebels are crying "Allahu Akbar" while blaming their crimes on Syria.
Kind of like Our Government Blowing up the World Trade Center while blaming Al Qaeda in a False Flag Operation. Don't believe it....then watch this "PBS" Documentary video and learn....
PBS - Colorado broadcasts 9/11: Explosive Evidence - Experts Speak Out (2012 documentary).....http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1l-8PFk8j5I
Then Watch a Real American General Speak (unlike BeTrayUS) and ask your self "How Did They Know?
General Wesley Clark: Wars Were Planned - Seven Countries In Five Years...http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9RC1Mepk_Sw&feature=g-all-f
America Just Say No to another "Not War" for the Wall Street Banksters and the Military Industrial Corporations Fun & Profits!
Demand Impeachment for President Obama for his Secret Support of Al Qaeda in Syria and at Benghazi-Gate!
“If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face—for ever.” ~ George Orwell, 1984
@MUW, This could be any groupe blowing up a Mosc anywhere to me. Your impeachment crap why didn't 3 Republican Presidents get impeached fot the 5 ambassadors they murdered? First of all you know nothing about security or who is responsible to supply it let alone how the request system works. Do you know the Senate controls the Security for Ambassadors? The Republicans are responsible to supply Security at this time. Do you know they were given $440,000 to supply Security to Benghazi? Do you know they had more than ample time to supply said Security request? Right now I would say that The Senate has Blood on their hands. The investigation is still in Ajudication and nothing has been let put yet as to the findings? Course not!!!
Ah yes the invariable "Blame it" on the Republicans because everyone knows "Obama" can do no wrong! He can Murder Cheat Lie Disappear American Citizens and their response is always "Bush Cheney" as if that Magic Talisman protects these Democrats from all of their Crimes Failures & Deceptions today!
Oh Well what can you expect from a poster with a "6dogs" nickname......
BTW if you had actually bothered to "Read & Watch" my post "6dogs" you would have know that The same destroyed mosque was shown on aljazeera tv.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Jazeera
Aljazeera the Qatar (Saudi) owned CIA Fronted Arab Media "Claimed" The Mosque was in SYRIA! I would like to suspect they would know better the "Where" than some measly "6dogs"
See folks this is exactly what happens when you chose to Spew Propaganda without bothering to read the links! You might just get thrown to the Dogs.
Speaking of Benghazi-Gate here is a "Really Check" for 6dogs.....
Petraeus, Allen, Gaouette, Ham: The Benghazi Story The Media Isn't Telling You.....http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=izYMklKUcpk&feature=player_embedded
Impeach Obama in 2012 for posing over the Dead Bodies of Ambassador Stevens and his Defenders for Political Gain and for his Cover Up of the Secret CIA Prison in Benghazi which resulted in their deaths!
"Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind. " ~George Orwell
Let us not be fooled again by the Sunni Saudi hater and killer gangs like in Iraq, Libya and other places.
NO SYRIA, NO IRAN AND REMOVE SANCTIONS ON IRANIAN OIL.
Iran can get nukes or WMDs from Pakistan easily. So no WMDs crap either like in Iraq.
Followers of Islamic cult, especially Sunni Saudi inspired Islamic radicals and militants (al-Qaida, Salaffi, Wahhabi, MB, Taliban and other label ones), are fast marching backwards to their seventh century desert tribal days.
They are indulging in rapings, lootings, killings and genocides of non-Muslims (Darfur, S. Sudan, Nigeria and spreading like wild fire in many regions and Muslims (Libya, Mali, Iraq, Syria, Pakistan, Afghanistan and other places).
In Egypt, Sunni Saudi backed Salaffi and MB are opening chapters. Just watch the fate of Christians, women and Israel as the time goes by.
Even in Syria, if Assad is overthrown by Sunni Islamic religious Nazis like al-Qaida, MB, the conditions of Christians will be unbearable just like Iraq.
In Afghanistan, half of NATO forces deaths are due to Pakis.
These two "strategic allies" have crippled US and allies so badly that US and allies can't do much anywhere and anything!
I know that the fundamentalist Muslims are iconoclasts, but I can't help but remember the looting of the Iraqi museums in 2003 in the aftermath of the U.S.-led invasion, made all the worse that no weapons of mass destruction were ever found. Iconoclasm existed for a while in the Byantine Empire, and under the Calvinists during the Protestant Reformation. Some Christian fundamentalists to this day argue that one of the Ten Commandments forbids graven images, although Moses was instructed by God to create two statues of cherubim angels on the lid of the Ark of the Covenant (Exodus 25:18-22), and to embroider the curtain which separated the Holy of Holies iin the Tabernacle or Tent of the Meeting with cherubim angels (Exodus 26:31). King Solomon also created statues of cherubim angels in the First Temple in Jerusalem according to I Kings chapter 6. Worshipping statues of pagan gods and godesses, such as the Golden Calf mentioned in Exodus 32, is forbidden however to Jews, Christians, and Muslims, all of whom worship God the Father.
6dogs: Sanctions on Iranian oil have to be removed to weaken our enemy No. Sunni Saudis and co and reduce our economic miseries.
Who with little sense impose sanctions on Iranian oil and manipulate oil prices higher from $40 in 2009 to around $110 now?
ME is not our business. Just keep miles away.
Just like before each Iraqi wars, autocratic, highly corrupt and despotic bigoted Sunni Sunni Saudi, UAE, Qatar, Kuwaiti and Sunni oil rich nations are stage managing their dances and actions through oil companies, extremist Jewish lobbys and their puppets in the US, Britain, EU and other nations on Syria and Iran.
In Syria, Syrian rebels are backed by a-Qaida and MB.
In Egypt, Islamic fundamentalist Morsi is a front cover for the Sunni Islamic extremist Salaffi, MB and others.
If Iraqi wars gave us PIIGS, there will more nations added to PIIGS by manipulating oil prices higher and higher with Iranian oil sanctions.
IRAQ WARS
Net results of Saudi, Kuwait, UAE, oil companies and their lobbyists directed 1991 and 2003 Iraqi wars are
WINNERS
1. Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, UAE and other rich ME sharks became richer by manipulating oil prices too high.
2. Oil companies and their lobbyists also benefitted. Oil prices, which were hardly $30 a barrel before 1991, shot up to $140 a barrel.
3. Since 2003, future traders, rating agencies, Wall Street and oil companies and their lobbyists transferred five trillion dollars from oil importing countries to oil exporting nations.
4. Rich Sunni ME sharks (Saudi Arabia in particular) funded Salaffi and Wahhabi mosques and Islamic radicals and terrorists all over the world. These Sunni Islamic radicals and terrorists are rampaging all over the world. World’s 80 percent of problems are due to them.
LOSERS
1. General US and European nations’ public. There have been high unemployment, cut in welfare measures, housing market collapse and more miseries. Since 2001, US spent three trillion dollars on Iraq and Afghan wars. Did the Saudis and co foot the bill?
2. Poor soldiers killed and injured and their families. In Iraq and Afghan wars 6300 soldiers were killed and 40000 injured.
3. High budget deficits and heavier borrowing. Many nations (PIIGS) and people are on line to bankruptcy!
4. Iraq will plunge into bloody sectarian civil wars leading to the creation of Shiastan, Sunnistan and Kurdistan. Here the losses are of Iraqis.
It is always tragic when a people lose their heritage and that which helps tie them culturally as a people to their land. For when one understands where they have come from, their roots, it helps them understand where they can go forward.
For all the differences which so often can divide groups or segments of people, it is often in the past which humans can look to and find common grounds on which to build a future.
Like a great tree whose roots go down deep into the rich soil of Mother Earth. Finding water and nourishment. Or similar goals and values, providing strength for a magnificent tree to spread wide its boughs. Agreements groups can now come together on.
These ancient sites show there is a rich foundation reaching back to early families of mankind in these areas. They can give hope to those who are willing to see the possibilities of reaping the fruit of peace one day.But only if allowed to survive. In the fits of man's hatred between himself, often such fruit is sacrificed.
What has stood thousands of years may fall because of greed and blind hate. Short sighted individuals are willing to steal what really belongs to everyone. Their minds and souls closed to the awesomeness of the value of what is before them. Yet the greatest sin will the the loss of irreplaceable life. Until humanity moves beyond killing each other, nothing on earth is truly safe from destruction, including the earth itself.
he biggest shame is on the rebels that are using the places of prominance to hide when the planes or shells come, same as in Gaza, hide behind something/someone or shoot from somewhere you do not expect the enemy to shoot back at, what cowards and now they cry foul thru world agencies to protect the past.
Muslims in many parts of the world are busy destroying any and all religious icons, statues, historical churches, non-Islamic cemetaries, Non-Islamic books and documents and any other record of non-Islamic religion or culture they can lay their hands on...
I am not sad when they destroy their own heritage and historical buildings or icons...
Islam is all about destruction...
People in this region have been killing each other and destroying historical sites for many hundreds of years. I for one do not see how we can stop them. It is a different way of thinking based on religion and poverty. I fear the only way to have true change in this region is to isolate them and let them destroy themselves. Lets concentrate on the home front and stop wasting our time with people and places that will never change.
They destroy their own...
We live in a very sick world. Our planet is dieing,our civilation's are in ruin's,Technology has progressed in leaps and bounds, but mankind has not changed! I believe that there are those on this planet that are so powerful and wealthy and they won't rest untill they have destroyed what remains of freedom and justice for the price of GREED! Corparations and banks have gotten way too large and if the TRUTH were known and told this group is responsible for all of mankinds ill's! John Lennon sang it the best" Imagine there's no heaven, it's easy if you try,no hell below us,above us only sky. Imagine all the people living life in peace,oh,oh you may call me a dreamer,but I'm not the only one,someday you'll join us and the world will be as one!
Of the two, wich do you consider the greatest treasure ? Old buildings or human freedom?
wow some of you guys are literally insane...
Muslims are busy destroying whatever comes near them and wherever they go!
They enjoy Islamic style of killing (halal) and destruction!
Allah ho Akbar in a place means bad news, worse news, and then only wreckage all around!
After they ruin their own place, they move to the next prosperous place.
How is that there are many Pakis, Somalis, Bangladeshis all over the world?
The rebs are terrorists. They used car bombs to blow up civilians.
Argue that.
Muslims don't care who dies...just as long as someone dies...
is this really surprising to anyone??? these people have been doing this since the beginning of their civilization and history tells us this, no telling what we might be able to study about our past had it not been for these radical religious nuts blowing everything and destroying things for a fantasy god...and these uneducated fruit loops are now able to posses a nuclear anything....people need to read your history and not make the same mistake over and over and over...it called learning something many in this beautiful world needs to take time to do
religious people scare me
I have been to many World Heritage Sites over the globe. While it is a sad loss for all of humanity to lose such sites and artifacts to looting and war, this is just history repeating itself. If the fundamentalist islamists want to destroy their treasures and loot historic sites in their own country, then let them do it till there is nothing left. It only shows the world what their basic ideology is based on. No one will really lose anything that hasn't been documented and photographed. When they have nothing left but their AK's, torn up buildings, no power or running water, no infrastructure, worn-out roads and bridges, then they will have what they deserve for their own people - nothing. Somalia and Afghanistan are two perfect examples of what a country degrades to when these people take over. But..........if that's what Egypt, Syria, and the rest of the middle east wants, then let them go to it - it is THEIR country. It is only in the face of adversity after total destruction of their homeland that they will finally (maybe) realize their mistake.
is there any difference what israel does to protect itself from the terroists and what the king of syria does to protect their country from terroists. when the jews do it it is fine by the u.s. when syria does it the government is doing bad things what hipocracy. hey united states what is the difference a good lobby????
The difference is the syrians themselves are attacking the government who is run by a total dictator who has no problems torturing his own people. In Israel the savages are not fighting the government but rather killing innocent people and targeting those innocent people
I am no fan of the middle east but the most amazing relics from a long distant past are there and they need to be protected. It is such a shame the place is inhabited by such savages