Militants destroy ancient ruins

BEIRUT-- Islamic State militants have destroyed a temple at Syria's ancient ruins of Palmyra, activists said Sunday, realizing the worst fears archaeologists had for the 2,000-year-old Roman-era city after the extremists seized it and beheaded a local scholar.

Palmyra, one of the Middle East's most spectacular archaeological sites and a UNESCO World Heritage site, is near the modern Syrian city of the same name. Activists said the militants used explosives to blow up the Baalshamin Temple on its grounds. The blast was so powerful that it also damaged some of the Roman columns around it.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Sunday night that the temple was blown up a month ago. Turkey-based activist Osama al-Khatib, who is originally from Palmyra, said the temple was blown up Sunday. Both said the extremists used a large amount of explosives to destroy it.

Both activists relied on information for those still in Palmyra, and the discrepancy in their accounts could not be immediately reconciled, though such contradictory information is common in Syria's long civil war.

The fate of the nearby Temple of Bel, dedicated to the Semitic god Bel, was not immediately known. Islamic State group supporters on social media also did not immediately mention the temples' destruction.

The Sunni extremists, who have imposed a violent interpretation of Islamic law across their self-declared "caliphate" in territory they control in Syria and Iraq, claim ancient relics promote idolatry and say they are destroying them as part of their purge of paganism. However, they are also believed to sell off looted antiquities for significant amounts of cash.

The temple dates to the first century and is dedicated to the Phoenician god of storms and fertilizing rains.

News of the temple's destruction came after relatives and witnesses said Wednesday that Khaled al-Asaad, an 81-year-old antiquities scholar who devoted his life to understanding Palmyra, was beheaded by Islamic State militants, who hung his body on a pole.

Meanwhile, at least 23 Iraqi soldiers and government-allied militiamen were killed Sunday in an attack by Islamic State militants in Anbar province west of Baghdad, Iraqi military and police officials said, in the second heavy death toll suffered by the Iraqi military and its allies in recent days in the vast Sunni region.

The officials said Sunday's attack, which killed 17 soldiers and six Sunni militia fighters, happened in the rural district of Jaramshah, north of Anbar's provincial capital, Ramadi.

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media.

They said the Islamic State fighters used suicide bombings and mortar shells and that the chief of army operations in Anbar, Maj-Gen. Qassim al-Dulaimi, was wounded in the attack.

News of Sunday's attack came two days after as many as 50 soldiers were killed by the Islamic State in two ambushes elsewhere in Anbar province, much of which is under Islamic State control, including Ramadi and Fallujah.

Information for this article was contributed by Bassem Mroue and Hamza Hendawi of The Associated Press.

A Section on 08/24/2015

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