This article is more than 5 years old

This article is more than 5 years old



Islamic State militants used sledgehammers and assault rifles to destroy ancient artefacts at a Unesco world heritage site in Iraq and vowed to continue their rampage against the country’s millennia-old history, according to a new video released by the group.

Iraq’s tourism and antiquities ministry said in March that Isis had bulldozed the ancient fortress city of Hatra, one of a string of attacks targeting heritage, religious and cultural sites in Nineveh, which fell under the group’s sway in a lightning conquest last summer in which it took control of the city of Mosul.

This is the first time that footage appearing to confirm the assault on the fortress city has been released.

Hatra dates back 2,000 years to the Seleucid empire, which controlled a large part of the ancient world conquered by Alexander the Great.

Isis footage of militants destroying artefacts in Hatra uploaded to YouTube by the Associated Press

The seven-minute video by the group’s “Tigris media office” shows an aerial view of Hatra filmed by an Isis surveillance drone, which identifies the locations of “idols” in the ancient fortress.

“Islamic State has sent us to these idols to destroy them,” one of the militants in the video says from the scene.

Isis destroys historic Christian and Muslim shrines in northern Iraq Read more

“Some of the infidel organisations say the destruction of these alleged artefacts is a war crime. We will destroy your artefacts and idols anywhere and Islamic State will rule your lands.”

Unesco condemned the reported destruction of Hatra last month as “cultural cleansing” and said the destruction amounted to war crimes.

The video shows militants destroying priceless statues and faces engraved into the walls of the ancient fortress city with sledgehammers and kalashnikov rifles, smashing them into debris and fragments.

The militants cite the examples of the prophets Abraham, who destroyed idols to demonstrate that only God should be worshipped, and Muhammad, who did likewise in Mecca when the city converted to Islam, according to Muslim tradition.

Isis attacks on ancient sites erasing history of humanity, says Iraq Read more

“Praise to God who enabled us and the soldiers of Islamic State to remove the signs of polytheism,” says another militant near the end of the video.

The assault on Hatra took place after Isis released a video showing its fighters smashing ancient artefacts and winged bull statues at Mosul museum and the Nergal gate to ancient Nineveh. There were also reports that it had bulldozed the Assyrian archaeological site of Nimrud. The group burned many priceless manuscripts in Mosul museum and attacked the historic city of Dur Sharrukin.

It has also released images of the destruction of Christian and Shia shrines in the province.

The Isis rampage through Nineveh has ended centuries of coexistence between its diverse communities. Many Chaldean and Syriac Christians fled Iraq in the face of the group’s advance and the prospect of massacres and mass conversions. The militants also attempted to enslave and starve thousands of members of the ancient Yazidi religious sect.