IS Turns Ancient City Of Nimrud Into Dust

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Islamic State militants have continued their spree of destroying ancient cities and treasures across Iraq, this time targeting Nimrud.

The video posted online appears to show the terror group's fighters smashing artefacts in the ancient Assyrian city before blowing up the site.

Militants can be seen ripping large barrels filled with powder in a room where the walls are lined with gypsum slabs, beautifully carved with representations of Assyrian figures.

Nimrud was founded in the 13th century BC and contains one of the most famous archaeological sites in the history of a country often described as the cradle of civilisation.

It was such a special city, in fact, that it was on Unesco's tentative list of world heritage sites.

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Gallery: Images Of The 3,000-Year-Old Assyrian Site

The 3,000-year-old site on the banks of the Tigris river was once the capital of the world's most powerful empire, the Assyrians. European archeologists first excavated the site in the 1840s

Statues, sections of palaces and gold items were unearthed at the site. Some of its best-known monuments include these winged bulls with human faces, known as lamassus

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Many of its artefacts were on display in the Baghdad Museum, but disappeared during the Gulf War in the 1990s. It was presumed they had been looted

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However, after the 2003 Iraq invasion by allied forces, the items were found safe. They had been locked away in a secret vault in the city, submerged in sewage water

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The collection includes hundreds of gold and gem-studded jewellery items

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The explosion sends a huge mushroom into the sky and turns yet another important part of the region's history to dust.

The fighters hack away at statues with sledgehammers and carve them up with angle grinders, claiming that God had "honoured" them by "removing and destroying everything that was held to be equal to him and worshipped without him".

In the jihadists' view, statues, idols and shrines amount to recognising objects of worships other than God and must be destroyed.

A militant speaking at the end of the destruction said: "Whenever we are able in a piece of land to remove the signs of idolatry and spread monotheism, we will do it."

The attacks, which follow similar destruction by IS in Iraq and Syria earlier this year and last year, will be widely criticised.

Abdulamir Hamdani, an archaeologist from Stony Brook University in New York, said of Nimrud: "It's really a very important site in the history of Mesopotamia.

"Many of Assyria's greatest artistic treasures came from this site."

Nimrud is the later Arab name given to a settlement which was originally called Kalhu and was first described in 1820, being plundered by Western explorers and officials over decades.

It was also looted and damaged during the 2003 US invasion.

Most of Nimrud's most valuable artefacts were moved long ago to museums in Mosul, Baghdad, Paris, London and elsewhere but giant "lamassu" statues - winged bulls with human heads - and reliefs were still on site.

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