Damascus (AFP) – Islamic State group jihadists mutilated the body of a famed Syrian archaeologist after killing him execution-style in the ancient city of Palmyra last week, his family said Sunday.
Khaled al-Assaad, Palmyra’s antiquities chief for 50 years, was on Tuesday beheaded by IS militants who tied his body to a post before hanging it in the city’s ruins, amid international outrage.
“Residents of Palmyra told me that ISIS had cut up my father’s body into pieces,” said Mohammad al-Assaad, one of Khaled’s sons, said at a wake held Sunday at Damascus National Museum.
“My father used to always say, ‘I’ll die standing up, like the palm tree of Palmyra,'” Mohammad told AFP.
Syria’s national antiquities chief Mamoun Abdulkarim gave a similar account.
“Khaled’s cousins, who also work in antiquities, told me that the group removed his body from the pole and mutilated it,” said Abdulkarim.
Omar al-Assaad, another of Khaled’s sons, said his father had attempted to hide from IS in Palmyra after the jihadists overran the city on May 21.
But Khaled and his son Walid, the current head of antiquities in Palmyra, were detained by ISIS and questioned about stores of gold and artefacts.
The family was shocked to see him dragged out to Palmyra’s public square to be murdered, Omar said.
The family fled to the government-controlled city of Homs, and then on to Damascus.
The killing is one of hundreds that have been carried out by ISIS in and around Palmyra, a UNESCO world heritage site famed for its well-preserved Greco-Roman ruins.
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