Publish date19 Aug 2015 - 16:40
Story Code : 202201
Britain's news media

Isis beheads elderly chief of antiquities in ancient Syrian city

TNA - LONDON
Isis militants hung body of Khaled Asaad, 82, in a main square of Palmyra, national antiquities chief says
Isis beheads elderly chief of antiquities in ancient Syrian city
According to Taghrib news reporter (TNA) in London, Britain's news media have reported: “Isis militants have beheaded an antiquities scholar in the ancient Syrian city of Palmyra and hung his body on a column in a main square of the historic site, Syria’s antiquities chief has said.”

Isis, whose insurgents control swathes of Syria and Iraq, captured Palmyra in central Syria from government forces in May, but is not known to have damaged its monumental Roman-era ruins despite a reputation for destroying artefacts militants view as idolatrous under their puritanical interpretation of Islam.

Syrian state antiquities chief Maamoun Abdulkarim said the family of Khaled Asaad had informed him that the 82-year-old scholar who worked for over 50 years as head of antiquities in Palmyra was killed by Isis on Tuesday.

Also Guardian newspaper wrote Asaad had been detained and interrogated for over a month by the Sunni Muslim extremists, Abdulkarim told Reuters.

“Just imagine that such a scholar who gave such memorable services to the place and to history would be beheaded ... and his corpse still hanging from one of the ancient columns in the centre of a square in Palmyra,” Abdulkarim said.

“The continued presence of these criminals in this city is a curse and bad omen on (Palmyra) and every column and every archaeological piece in it.”

Palmyra-based activists circulated an unverified, gruesome image on social media of Asaad’s beheaded body, tied to a pole on a street in the city.

A board in front of the body set out the charges against him, which accused him of loyalty to the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, maintaining contact with senior regime intelligence and security officials and managing Palmyra’s collection of “idols.”

 
https://taghribnews.com/vdcgzx9xqak9zx4.5jra.html
Source : Britain's news media
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