Isis beheads 82-year-old antiquities scholar in Palmyra, Syria

Islamic state militants have beheaded an antiquities scholar in the ancient Syrian city of Palmyra and hung his body on a column in a main square of the historic site, international media report.

Syrian state antiquities chief Maamoun Abdulkarim said the family of scholar Khaled Asaad had informed him that the 82-year-old scholar who worked for over 50 years as head of antiquities in Palmyra was killed by Isis on Tuesday.

The small village of Palmyra was captured by Isis in May, but the latter is not known to have damaged its monumental Roman-era ruins despite a reputation for destroying artefacts militants view as idolatrous under their puritanical interpretation of Islam.

According to the Guardian, before the city’s capture by Isis, Syrian officials said they moved hundreds of ancient statues to safe locations out of concern they would be destroyed by the militants and in June, Isis did blow up two ancient shrines in Palmyra that were not part of its Roman-era structures but which the militants regarded as pagan and sacrilegious.

Asaad had been detained and interrogated for over a month by the ultra-radical Sunni Muslim militants, Reuters reports.

“Just imagine that such a scholar who gave such memorable services to the place and to history would be beheaded ... and his corpse still hanging from one of the ancient columns in the centre of a square in Palmyra,” Abdulkarim said.

“The continued presence of these criminals in this city is a curse and bad omen on (Palmyra) and every column and every archaeological piece in it,” he added.

Asaad was known for several scholarly works published in international archaeological journals on Palmyra, which in antiquity flourished as an important trading hub along the Silk Road. He had also worked over the past few decades with US, French, German and Swiss archaeological missions on excavations and research in Palmyra’s famed 2,000-year-old ruins, a Unesco World Heritage Site that includes Roman tombs and the Temple of Bel.