LOC16:55
13:55 GMT
PARIS, Feb 27 (KUNA) -- UNESCO Director-General Irina Bokova requested an emergency UN Security Council meeting on Friday to stop the destruction of heritage in Mosul.
"I am deeply shocked by footage released today showing the destruction of statues and other artefacts of the Mosul Museum. I condemn this as a deliberate attack against Iraq's millennial history and culture, and as an inflammatory incitement to violence and hatred," Bokova said in the press statement Friday.
Massive statues from the UNESCO world Heritage site of Hatra and unique artefacts from the archeological sites of Ninewah governorate have been destroyed or vandalized in the Mosul Museum, she added.
"This attack is far more than a cultural tragedy. This is also a security issue as it fuels sectarianism, violent extremism and conflict in Iraq. This stands in direct violation to the most recent United Nations Security Council Resolution 2199 that condemns the destruction of cultural heritage and adopts legally-binding measures to counter illicit trafficking of antiquities and cultural objects from Iraq and Syria,
"This is why I have immediately seized the President of the Security Council to ask him to convene an emergency meeting of the Security Council on the protection of Iraq's cultural heritage as an integral element for the country's security" Bokova pointed out.
The Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group on Thursday released a video in which its militants are seen smashing ancient statues to pieces with sledgehammers in the main museum in Mosul.
They are also shown using a jackhammer to deface a large Assyrian winged bull at a huge archeological site in Mosul.
Archaeologists and heritage experts have described the destruction as a catastrophe and compared the 2001 dynamiting by the Taliban of the Bamiyan Buddhas in Afghanistan. (end)
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