IS blows up ancient temple in Syria's Palmyra

The Islamic State (IS) militants blew up an ancient temple in Syria's millennia-old oasis city of Palmyra, a monitor group reported Sunday.

Temple of Baal Shamin, or "Lord of the Heavens", was blown up by the IS militants, who rigged it with large quantities of explosives before sending it up in flames, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported.

The temple is located just tens of meters from the famous Romanian Theater of Palmyra.

The UK-based watchdog group cited information and narratives by people who escaped Palmyra as stating that the detonation of the temple happened a month ago.

The IS terror group seized full control of Palmyra, otherwise known as Tadmur, on May. 20 this year.

Since capturing it, the terror-labeled group destroyed the city's notorious military prison and several Islamic tombs. The IS also committed public executions of government soldiers and people accused of working for the government.

Their latest execution was against a Khaled Asaad, a prominent Syrian archeologist, who had lived in Palmyra for most of his life and dedicated his carrier to study the archeological sites of Palmyra.

Government officials said the IS militants were trying to extract information of Asaad about the "hidden gold" of Palmyra, which, they said, don't even exist.

Palmyra contains the monumental ruins of a great city that was one of the most important cultural centers of the ancient world.

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. Enditem