New satellite photos show Iraq’s oldest Christian monastery destroyed

PanARMENIAN.Net - New satellite photos confirm what church leaders and Middle East preservationists had feared: the oldest Christian monastery in Iraq has been reduced to rubble, yet another victim of Islamic State’s relentless destruction of heritage sites it considers heretical, the Guardian reports.

St Elijah’s monastery stood as a place of worship for 1,400 years, including most recently for U.S. troops. In earlier millennia, generations of monks tucked candles in the niches, prayed in the chapel and worshipped at the altar. The Greek letters chi and rho, representing the first two letters of Christ’s name, were carved near the entrance.

This month, a high resolution camera was used to grab photos of the site, which were compared with earlier images of the same spot.

Before it was razed, a partially restored, 27,000-square-foot stone and mortar building stood fortress-like on a hill above Mosul. Although the roof was largely missing, it had 26 distinctive rooms including a sanctuary and chapel.

One month later photos show “that the stone walls have been literally pulverized”, said imagery analyst Stephen Wood, CEO of Allsource Analysis, who pinpointed the destruction between August and September 2014.“Bulldozers, heavy equipment, sledgehammers, possibly explosives turned those stone walls into this field of grey-white dust. They destroyed it completely,” he said.

In Irbil, Iraq, Catholic priest Rev Paul Thabit Habib, 39, stared in disbelief at the images.

“Our Christian history in Mosul is being barbarically leveled,” he said in Arabic. “We see it as an attempt to expel us from Iraq, eliminating and finishing our existence in this land.”

ISIS, (also Islamic State) which now controls large parts of Iraq and Syria, has killed thousands of civilians in the past two years. Along the way, its fighters have destroyed whatever they consider contrary to their interpretation of Islam.

St Elijah’s joins a growing list of more than 100 religious and historic sites looted and destroyed, including mosques, tombs, shrines and churches. Ancient monuments in the cities of Nineveh, Palmyra and Hatra are in ruins. Museums and libraries have been pillaged, books burned, artwork crushed or trafficked.