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ISIS Said to Behead Syrian Antiquities Scholar in Palmyra
ISIS Beheads Syrian Antiquities Scholar in Palmyra
(about 1 hour later)
DAMASCUS, Syria — Islamic State militants beheaded one of Syria’s most prominent antiquities scholars in the ancient town of Palmyra and then hanged his body from one of its Roman columns, the Syrian state news media and an activist group said on Wednesday.
BEIRUT, Lebanon — The extremists of the Islamic State have beheaded the 83-year-old retired director of antiquities in the Syrian city of Palmyra, one of the world’s most important archaeological sites.
The killing of the scholar, Khaled al-Asaad, 81, was the latest act by the militant group, which has captured a third of both Syria and neighboring Iraq.
Before his retirement about a decade ago, the director, Khalid al-Asaad, was the top overseer for Palmyra’s sprawling Roman-era ruins and the gatekeeper for researchers seeking to work there for more than five decades.
Since the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, overran Palmyra in May, there have been fears that the militants, who have destroyed famed archaeological sites in Iraq, would demolish the 2,000-year-old Roman-era city at the edge of the town, a Unesco World Heritage site.
“Anyone who wanted to do anything in Palmyra had to work though Khalid al-Asaad,” said Amr Al-Azm, a Syrian professor of Middle Eastern history and anthropology at Shawnee State University in Ohio. “He was Mr. Palmyra.”
The Sunni extremist group, which has imposed a violent interpretation of Islamic law, or Shariah, believes ancient relics promote idolatry. Islamic State militants claim they are destroying ancient artifacts and archaeological treasures as part of their purge of paganism. The destruction adds to the wider, extensive damage the group has inflicted on ancient sites, including mosques and churches across Syria and Iraq.
After being detained for weeks by the Islamic State jihadists who seized the city this year, Mr. Asaad was killed on Tuesday, according to the Syrian government and conflict monitoring groups.
According to the Syrian state news agency SANA and the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a monitoring group based in Britain, Mr. Asaad was beheaded on Tuesday in a square outside the town’s museum. The group, which has a network of activists in Syria, said dozens of people gathered to witness the killing. Mr. Asaad had been held by the Islamic State for about a month, it added.
A photo distributed on social media by Islamic State supporters showed Mr. Asaad’s blood-soaked body suspended by its wrists with string from a traffic light. His head had been cut off and was resting on the ground between his feet, his glasses still on.
His body was then taken and hanged, Maamoun Abdulkarim, the head of the Antiquities and Museums Department in Damascus, told SANA.
Fighters from the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, seized Palmyra from government forces in May, raising fears that they would destroy its rich antiquities or sell them to finance its operations.
Mr. Asaad was “one of the most important pioneers in Syrian archaeology in the 20th century,” Mr. Abdulkarim said.
Workers managed to smuggled out much of the contents of the city’s museum before the jihadists entered, but some larger pieces left behind have been destroyed, as have a number of tombs in the area.
The Islamic State had tried to get information from him about where some of the town’s treasures had been hidden to save them from the militants, Mr. Abdulkarim added.
The jihadists are not believed to have significantly damaged the city’s ruins, and some think they are using them for protection, assuming that the United States-led military coalition that is bombing Islamic State positions in Iraq and Syria will not bomb a Unesco heritage site.
SANA said Mr. Asaad had been in charge of Palmyra’s archaeological site for four decades until 2003, when he retired. After retiring, he worked as an expert with the Antiquities and Museums Department.
Mr. Asaad’s relatives said that he had remained a supporter of the government of President Bashar al-Assad to the end, and that he had been especially alarmed when protesters seeking Mr. Assad’s ouster took up arms against him.
Mr. Asaad, who had a degree in history and education from the University of Damascus, wrote many books and scientific texts either individually or in cooperation with other Syrian or foreign archaeologists, SANA said.
Despite his long career with the Syrian government, Mr. Asaad never considered fleeing the city as the jihadists approached, or even after they detained him for a few days, relatives said.
He also discovered several ancient cemeteries, caves and the Byzantine cemetery in the garden of the Museum of Palmyra, SANA added.
“He was a man who was very connected to his city and to the antiquities,” said his nephew, an anti-government activist who goes by the name Khalid al-Homsi. “He was old. Where would he want to go at that age? He said that whatever was going to happen to the people would happen to him.”
“Al-Asaad was a treasure for Syria and the world,” Khalil Hariri, Mr. Asaad’s son-in-law who works in Palmyra’s Archaeological Department, said, speaking over the phone from the central Syrian city of Homs. “Why did they kill him?”
“Their systematic campaign seeks to take us back into prehistory,” he added. “But they will not succeed.”
Mr. Hariri said his father-in-law had been a member of President Bashar al-Assad’s governing Baath Party since 1954. Mr. Hariri added that Mr. Asaad is survived by six sons and five daughters.
Since falling to the Islamic State, Palmyra’s ancient site has remained intact, but the militants destroyed a lion statue in the town dating back to the second century. The statue, discovered in 1975, had stood at the gates of the town museum and had been placed inside a metal box to protect it.
In early July, the Islamic State released a video showing the killing of about 20 captured government soldiers in Palmyra’s amphitheater. Hundreds of people were seen watching the killings.
Also on Wednesday, an Islamic State suicide bomber targeted a predominantly Kurdish town in northeastern Syria, killing at least 11 people, an activist group said.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the explosion happened outside a local Kurdish police station in the town of Qamishli. It also said that more than 40 people were wounded in the blast. SANA also reported the explosion, saying it killed 13 and wounded about 50.
The Islamic State has been fighting Kurdish fighters in Syria since last year, and the extremists have carried out dozens of suicide attacks against the Kurds. The Kurdish fighters, aided by United States-led airstrikes, have also captured significant territory from the Islamic State in northern Syria.
