Video: Video shows jihadists destroying ancient artefacts (ABC News)
Photo: An unverified video has appeared online purporting to show Islamic State shows fighters destroying museum exhibits dating back thousands of years. (Reuters)
Islamic State has released a video showing militants armed with sledgehammers and jackhammers destroying priceless ancient artefacts in the Iraqi city of Mosul.
Experts and officials compared the destruction to the 2001 demolition of the Bamiyan Buddhas in Afghanistan by the Taliban.
Video showed the men knocking statues off their plinths and rampaging through the museum's collection, which included artefacts from the Assyrian and Hellenistic periods.
It also showed them using a jackhammer to deface an imposing granite Assyrian winged bull at the Nergal Gate in Mosul.
[It is] a terrible loss and an unbelievable act of cultural terrorism.
Iraqi professor of architecture Ihsan Fethi
"Muslims, these artefacts behind me are idols for people from ancient times who worshipped them instead of God," said a bearded militant speaking to the camera.
"The so-called Assyrians, Akkadians and other peoples had gods for the rain, for farming, for war ... and they tried to get closer to them with offerings.
"The prophet removed and buried the idols in Mecca with his blessed hands," he added, referring to the Muslim prophet Mohammed.
Experts said the items destroyed included original pieces, reconstructed fragments and copies.
The artefacts destroyed were from the Assyrian era and from the ancient city of Hatra, which lies in the desert about 100 kilometres south-west of Mosul.
The head of the United Nations' cultural agency demanded an emergency meeting of the Security Council following the mass destruction.
"This attack is far more than a cultural tragedy - this is also a security issue as it fuels sectarianism, violent extremism and conflict in Iraq," UNESCO chief Irina Bokova said in a statement.
Earlier this month, the UN adopted a resolution to curb trafficking in looted antiquities from Iraq and Syria, which have been a source of funding for IS.
Referring to the destroyed artefacts in Mosul, the man appearing in the video said "even if they are worth billions of dollars, we don't care".
But in his Conflict Antiquities blog, Dr Samuel Hardy, an archaeologist and criminologist, argued the jihadists were only destroying the bulky pieces that could not be smuggled out of the country.
"There is no doubt that the Islamic State [group] is profiting from the illicit trade in antiquities," he said.
"Although the criminals have destroyed some ancient artefacts, they have also destroyed a lot of modern reproductions.
"All this video really shows is that they are willing to destroy things that they can't ship out and sell off."
Iraq's Bamiyan moment, says scholar
The fate of the museum's Islamic collection remained unclear.
"This is kind of their Bamiyan moment," said Charles E Jones, a Pennsylvania University librarian and scholar who has worked for years to protect Iraqi heritage.
Photo: One of Afghanistan's Bamiyan Buddhas in 1963 and then after its destruction, at the hands of the Taliban, in 2008. (UNESCO/A Lezine, Carl Montgomery)
On Thursday, IS fighters also blew up the 12th-century Khudr mosque in central Mosul, witnesses and academics said.
Ihsan Fethi, an Iraqi professor of architecture based in Amman, described it as "a terrible loss and an unbelievable act of cultural terrorism".
He said the jihadists blew it up because the mosque also housed a tomb, something IS considered as amounting to idolatry.
The jihadists have controlled Mosul, Iraq's second city, since seizing it in a June offensive that saw them conquer large parts of the country.
They have systematically destroyed heritage sites, including several Sunni Muslim shrines.
The Mosul region was home to a mosaic of minorities, including the Assyrian Christians, who consider themselves to be the region's indigenous people.
Several Assyrian villages were seized by IS fighters in neighbouring Syria in recent days and at least 220 people kidnapped.
