Archaeological experts say a barrel bomb attack on Syria’s northern rebel-held town of Maaret al-Numan inflicted serious damage on a famed mosaic museum, AFP reported.
Non-governmental organization Association for the Protection of Syrian Archeology said the museum, housed in a 16th-century Ottoman inn known as a caravanserai, “suffered serious damage caused by two explosive-packed barrels dropped Monday by Syrian army helicopters,” according to AFP.
Photographs published online by the NGO show rubble where walls covered in ancient mosaics once stood. Other pieces were knocked from their displays and damaged by shrapnel from the blast.
Maamoun Abdulkarim, chief of Syria’s antiquities department, told AFP the attack is “a new tragedy for Syrian heritage.” He called for the country’s museums to remain “neutral zones” in the conflict, after declining to say who held responsibility for damage to the historic mosaics.
The Maaret al-Numan tragedy is the latest in an ongoing crisis for Syrian archaeological heritage. Last year, the UN warned almost 300 sites of irreplaceable value to human history have been damaged, destroyed, or looted in the country’s bloody civil war.
Archaeologists have repeatedly urged their concern for the Syrian conflict’s damage to historic sites.
