Blast at Syria's Palmyra prompts fears for famed temple

A powerful blast in the ruins of Syria's ancient Palmyra raised fears that the Islamic State group has damaged another of the Middle East's most treasured heritage sites.
Both Syria's antiquities chief and a monitor reported the blast yesterday in the UNESCO World Heritage site, but there was conflicting information on the fate of its famed Temple of Bel.
IS destroyed the smaller Baal Shamin temple at Palmyra last week, confirming the worst fears about their intentions for the site, which they seized from Syrian regime forces in May.
The jihadists have carried out a sustained campaign of destruction against heritage sites in areas under their control in Syria and Iraq, and in mid-August beheaded the 82-year-old former antiquities chief in Palmyra.

The extremist group's harsh interpretation of Islam considers statues and grave markers to be idolatrous, but it has also been accused of destroying heritage sites to loot items for the black market and to gain publicity.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based monitor, said late yesterday that IS fighters had set off explosives inside the 2000-year-old Temple of Bel, at least partially destroying the centrepiece of Palmyra's famed ruins.

Mohammad Hassan al-Homsi, an activist from Palmyra, also reported the partial destruction last night.
"They laid the explosives today, using booby-trapped boxes and barrels that were already prepared by IS," he said.

"This was the most important temple for tourists and for the people of Palmyra. They used to hold festivals there."
Homsi, who goes by a pseudonym, said the inner part of the temple was destroyed in the blast.
But Syria's antiquities chief Maamoun Abdulkarim said the explosion did not appear to have damaged the temple significantly.
"The frontal columns and the cella (interior) of the temple do not appear to have been damaged," Abdulkarim said today.
"According to the information we received from the town, the temple is still standing, but antiquities staff are not able to enter the site to see close up," he said.

There were no immediate images released by IS of the reported destruction.
The reports come a week after IS blew up the Baal Shamin temple, an act the UN's cultural agency UNESCO called a "war crime".