Photo

A Syrian man near the Temple of Baal in Palmyra, Syria, in 2014.Credit Sergey Ponomarev for The New York Times

Stories from Our Advertisers

BEIRUT, Lebanon — Islamic State militants in Syria have damaged the Temple of Baal, one of the most important structures in the ancient city of Palmyra, their second attack on the world-renowned ruins in a week, according to local activists and residents.

A loud explosion heard across Palmyra on Sunday damaged the best-preserved structure of the temple, a mostly standing stone building that included the altar, according to Khaled al-Homsi, an activist who recently fled to Turkey.

Mr. Homsi, a Palmyra native, remains in close contact with residents there and uses a nom de guerre for safety. He opposes both the Syrian government and the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, and he has long worked to document damage to Palmyra’s sprawling archaeological site by all sides in the complex conflict.

Maamoun Abdulkarim, the director of Syria’s antiquities department, said that the reports were being investigated and that, according to his local sources, the explosion took place inside the thick walls of the main building and did not cause the structure to collapse.

Photo

The Temple of Baalshamin in the ancient ruins of Palmyra, Syria, on June 26, left, in a satellite image provided by the State Department, and on Aug. 27, right, in an image provided by Airbus Defense and Space.Credit Left, U.S. Department of State, Humanitarian Information Unit; right, Airbus Defense and Space, via Reuters

“Our sources confirmed hearing the sound of a huge explosion, but within the temple walls,” he said. “Of course, they can’t reach the place, so we can’t assess the damage.”

Regardless, he said, “it is a loss.”

“I already appealed and called the world to save Tadmur,” Mr. Abdulkarim added, using another name for the site. “It’s not a political battle, but this is a cultural battle, and everybody should participate in defending this heritage, this civilization.”

The reported damage to the nearly 2,000-year-old Temple of Baal came just a week after the militants, who for three months have held the Palmyra ruins and the modern city with the same name, destroyed another important ancient building there, the nearby Temple of Baalshamin.

The Temple of Baal is an even grander structure. The towering altar building stands on a platform of large stone blocks at the center of a larger plaza encircled by columns and partial walls. No images have surfaced, so it is unclear how much of the altar building or outer walls and columns were damaged.

“It is not as huge as the damage at Baalshamin,” Mr. Abdulkarim said.

Continue reading the main story Graphic The Strategy Behind the Islamic State’s Destruction of Ancient Sites As it expanded across Iraq and Syria, the Islamic State destroyed many archaeological sites, looting them for profit and damaging some for propaganda.

OPEN Graphic

Consecrated in A.D. 32 to the Semitic god Baal, the temple has long been a source of pride for Syrians.

The Temple of Baal in modern times has been a backdrop for concerts in the annual Palmyra Music Festival, as has been the ancient amphitheater that the Islamic State has more recently used for executions.

The entire ancient city of Palmyra, which stands in the desert about 150 miles northeast of Damascus, is a Unesco World Heritage site.

As it has seized territory in Syria and Iraq, the Islamic State has attacked a number of historic sites, blowing up tombs and destroying statues that are forbidden by its extremist interpretation of Islam. Archaeologists and antiquities experts consider the losses to be irreparable.

“I feel very weak, very pessimistic,” Mr. Abdulkarim said last week.

On Monday, he added that among Syria’s many archaeological treasures, the Temple of Baal had special significance for him. “I visited the temple during the crisis,” he said, “and I took many pictures with my daughter, which is something I rarely do.”

He added, “It was an honor to stand in front of this great place.”

In March 2014, when Times reporters visited Palmyra, which was still controlled by the government, the ruins had largely survived the civil war. Local Syrian rebels opposed to President Bashar al-Assad had briefly occupied the Temple of Baal, damaging a modern guesthouse on its premises.

Syrian Army soldiers and museum officials pointed out a mark on a column that they said had come from a mortar shell, but it was small compared withpockmarks that they said had come from wars and other damage over the years. At the same time, Syrian Army forces were using other parts of the complex, including the medieval citadel, for military purposes.

The ruins, once open to the public and inhabited by some Bedouin families, became a quieter, lonelier place, with tighter government security and tourists driven away by the war. But at the time, they were almost entirely intact, glowing in the sunset and sunrise with a pinkish-orange cast.

Last week, the Islamic State released propaganda images showing its destruction of the Roman-era Temple of Baalshamin. Satellite images in the past several days confirmed that it had been destroyed.

Fighting in the region continued on Sunday, with Islamic State fighters clashing with other militants in southern Damascus. More than two dozen militants were killed in the fighting, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a monitoring group based in Britain.

Almost two weeks ago, the militants killed one of the most esteemed caretakers of the ruins. Khalid al-Asaad, 83, the retired antiquities director at Palmyra, was beheaded in a public square, and his body was suspended from a traffic light.

Militants routed government forces to capture Palmyra in May.

Residents of Palmyra, both supporters and critics of Mr. Assad, described the local government and its forces, many of whom fled during the onset of the attack, as ill equipped to protect the site.

Read more http://rss.nytimes.com/c/34625/f/640350/s/4970483d/sc/11/l/0L0Snytimes0N0C20A150C0A90C0A10Cworld0Cmiddleeast0Cisis0Emilitants0Eseverely0Edamage0Etemple0Eof0Ebaal0Ein0Epalmyra0Bhtml0Dpartner0Frss0Gemc0Frss/story01.htm