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Unesco puts Bamiyan Valley, Iraqi city on world heritage list
Paris, July 03: Unesco`s World Heritage Committee has inscribed Afghanistan`s Bamiyan Valley and the ancient Iraqi city of Ashur on both its world heritage list and its registry of sites in danger, the UN body announced.
Paris, July 03: Unesco's World Heritage Committee has inscribed Afghanistan's Bamiyan Valley and the ancient Iraqi city of Ashur on both its world heritage list and its registry of sites in danger, the UN body announced.
The emergency inscriptions were announced late yesterday during a week-long meeting of the committee taking place at the Paris headquarters of the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation.
The body is expected to announce additional new sites to be included on the world heritage list sometime this week, perhaps as early as today.
The giant ancient Buddha statues of Bamiyan, located 200 kilometers northwest of the Afghan capital Kabul, were blown up by the hardline Taliban regime in March 2001. Ravaged by 23 years of conflict, Afghanistan's archeological sites, particularly Bamiyan, have been badly hit by looters who have fuelled a rampant illegal trade in valuable artifacts.
Unesco said the site "symbolizes the hope of the international community that extreme acts of intolerance, such as the deliberate destruction of the Buddhas, are never repeated again."
The UN body described the site as being in a "fragile state of conservation", highlighting the "risk of imminent collapse of the Buddha niches with the remaining fragments of the statues". The ancient city of Ashur, located on the Tigris River in northern Iraq, dates back to the third millennium BC; from the 14th to the ninth centuries BC, it served as the capital of the Assyrian empire. Bureau Report
The body is expected to announce additional new sites to be included on the world heritage list sometime this week, perhaps as early as today.
The giant ancient Buddha statues of Bamiyan, located 200 kilometers northwest of the Afghan capital Kabul, were blown up by the hardline Taliban regime in March 2001. Ravaged by 23 years of conflict, Afghanistan's archeological sites, particularly Bamiyan, have been badly hit by looters who have fuelled a rampant illegal trade in valuable artifacts.
Unesco said the site "symbolizes the hope of the international community that extreme acts of intolerance, such as the deliberate destruction of the Buddhas, are never repeated again."
The UN body described the site as being in a "fragile state of conservation", highlighting the "risk of imminent collapse of the Buddha niches with the remaining fragments of the statues". The ancient city of Ashur, located on the Tigris River in northern Iraq, dates back to the third millennium BC; from the 14th to the ninth centuries BC, it served as the capital of the Assyrian empire. Bureau Report