[WATCH] Islamic State video shows militants smashing ancient artefacts in Iraq

Islamic State destroy ancient artefacts in Mosul, Iraq

The Islamic State group released a video on Thursday showing militants using sledgehammers to smash ancient artefacts in Iraq’s northern city of Mosul, describing the relics as idols that must be removed.

The destruction is part of a campaign by ISto eliminate what they view as “heresy”.

The five-minute video shows a group of bearded men inside the Mosul Museum using hammers and drills to destroy several large statues, which are then shown chipped and in pieces. The video then shows a black-clad man at a nearby archaeological site inside Mosul, drilling through and destroying a winged-bull Assyrian protective deity that dates back to the 7th century B.C.

United Nations spokesman Stephane Dujarric said UNESCO was examining the video. “The destruction of cultural heritage is reprehensible and criminal,” Dujarric said, adding that it robs current and future generations of the history of their past.

A professor at the Archaeology College in Mosul confirmed to the Associated Press that the two sites depicted in the video are the city museum and a site known as Nirgal Gate, one of several gates to the capital of the Assyrian Empire, Ninevah.

“I’m totally shocked,” Amir al-Jumaili told the AP over the phone from outside of Mosul. “It’s a catastrophe. With the destruction of these artefacts, we can no longer be proud of Mosul’s civilization.”

Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city and the surrounding Nineveh province fell to the militants during their blitz last June after Iraqi security forces melted away.

In their push, the extremists captured large swaths of land in both Iraq and neighbouring Syria, declared a self-styled caliphate on territories that are under their control, killing members of religious minorities, driving others from their homes, enslaving women and destroying houses of worship.

The region under IS control in Iraq has nearly 1,800 of Iraq’s 12,000 registered archaeological sites and the militants appear to be out to cleanse it of any non-Islamic ideas, including library books, archaeological relics, and even Islamic sites considered idolatrous.