UN: ISIS Temple Destruction ‘War Crime’

UNESCO head Irina Bokova called ISIS’s destruction of an ancient temple in Palmyra a “war crime.” Fighters with the terror group allegedly “placed a large quantity of explosives in the Temple of Baalshamin today and then blew it up, causing much damage to the temple,” Syrian antiquities chief Maamoun Abdulkarim told AFP Sunday. The inner area of the temple was “destroyed and the columns around collapsed,” he added. The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights also reported that militants placed explosives around the Temple of Baalshamin, but said the explosion occurred last month. The news comes just days after ISIS militants beheaded the 82-year-old antiquities chief for Palmyra’s ancient ruins.