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| Islamic State photos 'show Palmyra temple destruction' | Islamic State photos 'show Palmyra temple destruction' |
| (35 minutes later) | |
| Islamic State (IS) has published photos of what appears to be the destruction of the Temple of Baalshamin at the ancient ruins of Palmyra in Syria. | Islamic State (IS) has published photos of what appears to be the destruction of the Temple of Baalshamin at the ancient ruins of Palmyra in Syria. |
| Stills from a video showing militants rigging the temple with explosives and a large explosion were circulated by the jihadist group's supporters. | Stills from a video showing militants rigging the temple with explosives and a large explosion were circulated by the jihadist group's supporters. |
| Syrian officials and activists said on Monday that it had been blown up. | Syrian officials and activists said on Monday that it had been blown up. |
| The UN's cultural organisation said the deliberate destruction of Syria's cultural heritage was a war crime. | The UN's cultural organisation said the deliberate destruction of Syria's cultural heritage was a war crime. |
| Unesco also expressed outrage at the beheading last week of Khaled al-Asaad, the retired chief archaeologist at Palmyra, who refused to co-operate with IS. | |
| Pile of rubble | |
| The Temple of Baalshamin was built nearly 2,000 years ago and was considered the second most important structure at Palmyra - the monumental ruins of a great city that was one of the most important cultural centres of the ancient world. | |
| Syria's director of antiquities, Maamoun Abdul Karim, said IS militants had packed the Greco-Roman temple with large quantities of explosives and detonated them on Sunday, bringing down the inner sanctum, or cella, and surrounding pillars. | |
| Two of the images published online on Tuesday appear to show men placing barrels of explosives connected with detonating cord around the temple's interior and on several exterior columns. | |
| Another image shows a large explosion and a fourth shows the aftermath, with piles of rubble where the temple used to be. | |
| One caption reads: "The complete destruction of the pagan Baalshamin temple." | |
| The images could not be independently verified, but they carried a logo IS often uses for propaganda from Palmyra, which the group captured from Syrian government forces in May. | |
| IS has already ransacked and demolished several similar ancient sites that pre-date Islam in Iraq, seeing them as symbols of idolatry. |