A video showing ISIS militants destroying ancient museum artifacts in Mosul was released on social media this week with the destruction following reports that thousands of papers and books at the city’s libraries were burned this month.
Speaking on the video, the New York Post reported that a man said, “Oh Muslims, these artifacts that are behind me were idols and gods worshiped by people who lived centuries ago instead of Allah. Our Prophet ordered us to remove all these statues as his followers did when they conquered nations.”
The video showed Assyrian statues dating back to the 7th century B.C. being destroyed.
The video also showed men using sledgehammers, jackhammers, and power tools to destroy antiquities.
The Guardian reported that more than 100,000 manuscripts and books were destroyed recently by the ISIS terrorists in Mosul central library.
Irina Bokova, the head of the United Nation’s Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization, told The Guardian that the library destruction was “one of the most devastating acts of destruction of library collections in human history.”
“This destruction marks a new phase in the cultural cleansing perpetrated in regions controlled by armed extremists in Iraq,” Bokova told the newspaper. “It adds to the systematic destruction of heritage and the persecution of minorities that seeks to wipe out the cultural diversity that is the soul of the Iraqi people.”
Shahla Kamal, a former lecturer at Mosul University, told The Guardian that ISIS looted and destroyed new physics and chemistry laboratories on campus, and that the college’s library was looted too. ISIS fighters are sleeping in classrooms on campus.
Nineveh, the province in which Mosul is located, has been overrun by ISIS, according to the Post. Almost 1,800 of Iraq’s registered archeological sites are in the province.
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