ISIS shows proof of Palmyra ruins blast

Following the destruction of a nearly 2,000-year-old historic ruin in Syria -- an act the United Nations cultural organization called a war crime -- ISIS followed up with images of how it blasted the site.

ISIS supporters on Tuesday posted photos that show the destruction of the Baalshamin temple in Palmyra, Syria.

Maamoun Abdulkarim, Syria's director-general of antiquities and museums, said that sources in Palmyra informed him that ISIS members rigged the temple with large quantities of explosives and detonated them. The photos showing the destruction are real, he said.


The series of photos shows men rolling barrels of explosives into the temple and strapping them to columns, then a mushroom cloud with a final photo of a pile of rubble.
Captions on the photos claim that ISIS used IEDs, improvised explosive devices, to completely level the temple, which dates back to the first century.

The photos were posted on the usual Internet photo-sharing sites the group uses to distribute its propaganda.

"They destroyed an incredibly important architectural structure," Abdulkarim said. "It is the first structure in the Palmyra complex to be destroyed, although they recently destroyed two Islamic shrines nearby.

"They said they would destroy the statues but not the structures themselves inside Palmyra," he said. "They lied."