Palmyra's ancient
Roman temples and archway, blown up by Islamic State fighters last
year, will be restored once Syria recaptures the city from the
ultra-hardline Islamist group, the head of the antiquities authority
said on Saturday. Mamoun
Abdelkarim told Reuters he hoped Palmyra would be retaken within days,
after government forces fought their way into the western and northern
parts of the city, and promised to revive the Roman-era monuments "as a
message against terrorism". Islamic
State militants dynamited the temples of Baal Shamin and Bel, as well
as funeral towers and a triumphal arch, which had stood for 1,800 years
in the oasis city described by the U.N. cultural agency as a crossroads
of cultures since the dawn of humanity. The
group's acts of cultural destruction in Syria and neighboring Iraq,
which it documented and broadcast with the same thoroughness as its
shooting, beheading, drowning and burning of prisoners, were condemned
by the U.N. as war crimes. Despite that
damage, Abdelkarim said film footage he had seen from Palmyra in recent
days, including some taken by a drone flying over the old city, had been
reassuring. Many structures were
still standing, he said, including the walls around the Temple of Bel,
the amphitheatre, the long colonnaded avenue and Palmyra's striking
tetrapylon - a platform with four columns at each corner. But
he said it would be impossible to assess the real scale of the damage
until a team was able to visit the city, which has been under Islamic
State control since May last year. "We still fear
what happened there ... the destruction of the two temples, the
triumphal arch and the funeral towers," he said. Another unanswerable
question so far was the scale of secret excavations which may have taken
place. Islamic State's opponents
have said that, as well as its highly publicized destruction of cultural
sites, the group has also been heavily involved in antiquities
smuggling to raise money. Abdedlkarim said
Syria would be able to get back any looted artefacts if they came onto
the market for sale because they could easily be identified. He also
promised to restore as much as possible of the damaged sites. "We
will rebuild them with the stones that remain, and with the remaining
columns," he said. "(We will) bring life back to Palmyra".
Syria regime says will restore ancient Palmyra

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