Among the latest victims of ISIS, the militant group known as much for its brutal killings as its propaganda, is a 1,400-year-old Christian monastery in Iraq.
An aerial image captured by a DigitalGlobe satellite, at the request of the Associated Press, confirmed that the St. Elijah’s Monastery, located on a hill above Mosul, now lies in rubble. An analyst who looked at images for AP estimated that ISIS decimated it between Aug. 27 and Sept. 28, 2014, months after the militants staged a lightning offensive through northern Iraq. “There’s nothing to rebuild,” said Stephen Wood, CEO of Allsource Analysis.’
See ISIS’s Destruction of the Ancient City Palmyra
The monastery, known as Dair Mar Elia, joins a grim and expanding list of holy sites targeted by ISIS, including an ancient temple in Palmyra, Syria.
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