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Syria reclaims 6,000 looted antiquities

Xinhua, May 9, 2015 Adjust font size:

The Syrian authorities have confiscated and reclaimed as many as 6,000 antiquities looted by militant groups and smuggled outside Syria into Lebanon, the state news agency SANA reported Friday.

Citing the head the General Directorate of Antiquities and Museums, Ahmad Deeb, SANA said the reclaimed pieces include 69 antiquities and eight mosaic panels, which have been reclaimed from Lebanon.

Deeb said his directorate had undertaken a series of measures to protect the Syrian artifacts from robbery, including closing some museums after emptying them and moving most of antiquities from the areas controlled by the rebels in different parts of the country into safe places.

The antiquities directorate has also provided a number of international organizations with photos and documents of the looted antiquities, calling on such organizations to cooperate and coordinate for reclaiming all the Syrian antiquities trafficked by smugglers outside the country.

Ever since the extremist groups started mushrooming in the country, as a result of the long-running conflict, the Syrian government sounded the alarm of growing appetite of looters to plunder museums and carry out illegal excavation.

The antiquities' directorate repeatedly said that looters were randomly digging in archaeological sites, mainly in southern and northern Syria.

Syria, since the beginning of the crisis four years ago, confirmed that most of its museums' movable items have been taken to safe areas to avoid the repetition of what had happened in Iraq following the ouster of the former Iraqi President Saddam Hussain in 2003, when museums were pillaged of treasures.

Syria has many prehistoric, Greek, Byzantine and Islamic heritages. Before the crisis, Syria had attracted many multinational archaeological missions coming for searching new clues of historical facts on the development of civilizations.

The UNESCO has listed six Syrian sites on the World Heritage List, including the old cities of Damascus and Aleppo, al-Madhiq castle, the Krak des Chevaliers, the ancient city of Bosra and Palmyra and the ancient villages in northern Syria. Endit