Syrian experts shocked by damage inside Palmyra’s museum

Syrian antiquities experts express shock at the destruction the Islamic State wrought inside Palmyra’s museum, where scores of artifacts were smashed before troops drove the extremists out of the historic town.

Syria’s head of antiquities and museums, Maamoun Abdul-Karim, says that a team from his department is heading to Palmyra today to estimate the losses. Abdul-Karim says he will go himself once bomb squads finish removing explosives planted by the extremists before they lost the town.

Abdul-Karim says experts still need “many days” to determine the full extent of the damage.

Amr al-Azm, a former Syrian antiquities official who is now a professor at Shawnee State University in Ohio, says the world was already aware of the damage to the archaeological site, but was only now seeing the destruction wrought inside the museum.

“What was unfortunate really was the damage inside the museum, the many of the pieces that have not been saved, that they [Syrian officials] did not have time or the ability to move,” Al-Azm says. “It seems that a significant amount of damage was inflicted on them.”

In one positive outcome, state media reports that a lion statue dating back to the second century, previously thought to have been destroyed by IS, is found in a damaged but recoverable condition.

— AP