On June 12, the historic city of Sana, itself a Unesco World Heritage Site, was bombarded by the Saudis. This city, continuously inhabited for over 2,500 years, contains some of the most beautiful traditional architecture in the world. The deliberate targeting of a civilian district of the old city was inexcusable and raises serious questions about Saudi Arabia’s intentions in this conflict.

Ten other sites in Yemen are on the tentative Unesco World Heritage List. One of these, the old city of Saada, has also suffered extensive damage from air attack.

Another is the Marib Dam, one of the most renowned monuments of Yemen. Constructed no later than the first millennium B.C. and still in operation until around the sixth century A.D., this feat of engineering genius enabled the irrigation of an estimated 24,000 acres of fields by means of an elaborate system of canals. The dam, adorned with inscriptions in ancient South Arabian script, allowed the Sabaean kingdoms, famous for having controlled the incense routes, to subsist in the desert margin.

On May 31, the Marib Dam was bombarded and gravely damaged by the Saudi-led coalition. There can be no legitimate reason to attack this ancient monument. It is not a military target, and lying in an uninhabited area at the edge of the Ramlat al-Sabatayn desert, it has no strategic value.

The desecration of these archaeological sites and monuments, as well as the architecture and infrastructure of Yemen’s historic cities, can be called only a targeted and systemic destruction of Yemeni world heritage. Yet it has not been named as such.

The international media has devoted extensive coverage to the barbaric destruction of museums and archaeological sites in Iraq and Syria by the Islamic State. This is not the case with the continuing aerial vandalism perpetrated in Yemen by Saudi Arabia.

The same obscurantist ideology by which the Islamic State justifies its destruction of cultural heritage sites appears to be driving the Saudis’ air war against the precious physical evidence of Yemen’s ancient civilizations. There is no other explanation for why the Saudi-led offensive should have laid waste to these irreplaceable world archaeological treasures.