IS destroys ancient Assyrian Christian monastery in Syrian town

PanARMENIAN.Net - Islamic State destroyed an ancient Assyrian Christian monastery in the strategic Syrian town of Qaryatain, an Assyrian news agency and a monitoring group said Friday, the latest in a string of attacks on individuals and historic sites the militant group considers offensive to Islam, the Wall Street Journal reports.

Islamic State’s media office distributed photos depicting the bulldozing of the site on social media platforms.

The razing of the monastery closely follows the beheading by Islamic State earlier this week of Syria’s most prominent antiquities scholar, Khalid Asaad, in the ancient city of Palmyra, a Unesco World Heritage site.

The attacks carried out as part of Islamic State’s campaign against idolatry have triggered world-wide concern and condemnation from groups including Unesco, the United Nations’ cultural arm.

When Islamic State captured Palmyra in May it demolished ancient statues and two mausoleums. In March, the group destroyed parts of the ancient Assyrian city of Nimrud in Iraq, using bulldozers and explosives. In February, a video was released showing fighters destroying ancient Assyrian artifacts in a museum in Mosul, its Iraqi stronghold.

The group captured Qaryatain on Aug 5, its latest gain as it works to establish a foothold in areas near the majority regime-held city of Homs.

The town is just 25 miles from the main highway that connects Syria’s capital, Damascus, to other regime strongholds including Homs and the Mediterranean coast, homeland of President Bashar al-Assad.

Upon entering Qaryatain, the Sunni extremist group detained nearly 200 residents, among them dozens of Christians, locals said, according to the Journal.

A number of civilians were later transferred to Raqqa province, the self-proclaimed capital of Islamic State, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a U.K.-based monitoring group that tracks the conflict via a network of activists on the ground.

The destroyed Mar Elian monastery was founded in the fifth century A.D. as a Syriac Orthodox Monastery, according to the Assyrian International News Agency. Assyrian roots lie in ancient Mesopotamia, including modern day Iraq.