Rebels and state forces blame each other for toppling tower of 12th century Umayyad mosque in Unesco world heritage site

This article is more than 7 years old

This article is more than 7 years old

The minaret of a famed 12th-century Sunni mosque in the northern Syrian city of Aleppo was destroyed on Wednesday, leaving the once-soaring stone tower a pile of rubble and twisted metal scattered in the tiled courtyard.

President Bashar al-Assad's regime and anti-government activists traded blame for the attack on the Umayyad mosque in the heart of Aleppo's walled Old City, a Unesco World Heritage site.

It was the second time in just over a week that a historic Sunni mosque in Syria has been seriously damaged. Mosques served as a launching-pad for anti-government protests in the early days of the Syrian uprising, and many have been targeted.

Syria's state news agency, Sana, said that rebels from the al-Qaida-linked Jabhat al-Nusra group blew it up, while Aleppo-based activist Mohammed al-Khatib said a Syrian army tank fired a shell that "totally destroyed" the minaret.

The mosque fell into rebel hands earlier this year after heavy fighting that damaged the historic compound. The area around it, however, remains contested. Syrian state troops are about 200 metres away.

An amateur video posted online by the anti-government Aleppo Media Centre activist group showed the mosque's archways, charred from earlier fighting, and a pile of rubble where the minaret used to stand.

Standing inside the mosque's courtyard, a man who appears to be a rebel fighter says regime forces recently fired seven shells at the minaret, but failed to bring it down. He said that on Wednesday the shells hit their target.

"We were standing here today and suddenly shells started hitting the minaret. They [the army] then tried to storm the mosque but we pushed them back," the man says.

The video appeared to be genuine and corresponded with other Associated Press reporting.

The destruction in Aleppo follows a similar incident in the southern city of Daraa, where the minaret of the historic Omari Mosque was destroyed more than a week ago. The Daraa mosque was built during the Islamic conquest of Syria in the days of Caliph Omar ibn al-Khattab in the 7th century.

In that instance as well, the opposition and regime blamed each other for the damage. Sana also accused Jabhat al-Nusra of positioning cameras around the area to record the event in that case.

Syria's civil war poses a grave threat to the country's rich cultural heritage.

Last year, the medieval market in Aleppo, which is located near the Umayyad Mosque, was gutted by fire sparked by fighting.

Both rebels and regime forces have turned some of Syria's significant historic sites into bases, including citadels and Turkish bath houses, while thieves have stolen artefacts from museums.

Five of Syria's six World Heritage sites have been damaged in the fighting, according to Unesco, the UN's cultural agency. Looters have broken into one of the world's best-preserved Crusader castles, Crac des Chevaliers, and ruins in the ancient city of Palmyra have been damaged.

The damage is just part of the wider devastation caused by the country's crisis, which began more than two years ago with largely peaceful protests but morphed into a civil war as the opposition took up arms in the face of a withering government crackdown. The fighting has exacted a huge toll on the country, killing more than 70,000 people, laying waste to cities, towns and villages and forcing more than a million people to flee their homes and seek refuge abroad.