Fears as ISIL mines Syria’s Palmyra

The extremist group, which destroyed ancient sites in Iraq earlier this year, reportedly laid the explosives around Palmyra’s Greco-Roman ruins on Saturday.

The ancient Syrian city of Palmyra, which was seized by ISIL on May 21, 2015, has been laid with explosives by the extremist militants, a monitor said on June 21, 2015. AFP / May 18, 2015

Damascus // ISIL has laid explosives around the ancient ruins in Palmyra, prompting fears over the fate of Syria’s spectacular Unesco World Heritage site.

The extremist group, which destroyed ancient sites in Iraq earlier this year, laid the explosives around Palmyra’s Greco-Roman ruins on Saturday, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

“It is not known if the purpose is to blow up the ruins or to prevent regime forces from advancing into the town,” said Rami Abdel Rahman, director of the Britain-based monitoring group, which relies on a network of sources inside Syria.

He said regime forces had launched heavy airstrikes against the residential part of Palmyra in the past three days, killing at least 11 people.

“The regime forces are to the west outside the city, and in recent days they have brought in reinforcements suggesting they may be planning an operation to retake Palmyra,” he said.

A political source said a top commander had been despatched to the region to organise an offensive to recapture and secure Palmyra and several key gas fields nearby.

Syria’s antiquities chief Maamoun Abdulkarim Abdulkarim said he had also received reports from Palmyra residents that the ruins had been mined.

“We have preliminary information from residents saying that this is correct, they have laid mines at the temple site,” he said, adding “we are worried”.

He urged Palmyra’s “residents, tribal chiefs and religious and cultural figures to intervene to prevent this ... and prevent what happened in northern Iraq”.

“I am very pessimistic and feel sadness,” he said.

ISIL captured Palmyra, which is famed for its extensive and well-preserved ruins, on May 21.

The group regularly mines its territory to make it more difficult to recapture.

Palmyra’s fall prompted international concern about the fate of the heritage site described by Unesco as of “outstanding universal value”.

Before it was overrun, the head of the UN cultural body urged that the ruins be spared, saying they were “an irreplaceable treasure for the Syrian people, and the world”.

ISIL has released several videos documenting its destruction of heritage sites in Iraq and Syria.

In its extreme interpretation of Islam, statues, idols and shrines amount to recognising objects of worship other than God and must be destroyed.

There have been no reports of damage to sites in Palmyra since ISIL seized it, though the group’s fighters reportedly entered the city’s museum, which had largely been emptied of its collection before they arrived.

The group executed more than 200 people in and around Palmyra in the days after capturing the city, including 20 who were shot dead in the ancient ruins, according to the Observatory.

Before Syria’s war began, more than 150,000 tourists visited Palmyra each year, admiring its beautiful statues, more than 1,000 columns and formidable necropolis of over 500 tombs.

It had already suffered before ISIL’s arrival, with clashes between rebels and government forces in 2013 destroying columns and statues.

The site is also believed to have been looted during the chaos of the war that began in March 2011 with anti-government protests.

In December, the UN said nearly 300 cultural heritage sites in Syria, including Palmyra, had been destroyed, damaged and looted.

* Agence France-Presse