During the reporting period, reported heritage damage in the south of Syria remained elevated and correlates with increased military activity. Sites in the region of Daraa and Bosra are at high risk of damage and destruction. In the north of Syria, various sources reported the detonation of multiple tunnel bombs and barrel bombs in the UNESCO World Heritage Site Ancient City of Aleppo causing widespread destruction. Few details on these events are available at the time of this report. The use of tunnel bombs and barrel bombs within Aleppo’s Old City is well documented, and UN Security Council Resolution 2139 (2014) specifically calls for the end of indiscriminate attacks on civilian populations, specifically singling out the horrific impacts of barrel bombs. Tunnel bombs represent a deliberate — and when filmed and used for propagandistic purposes, frequently performative — destruction of heritage places of questionable military expedience. The use of tunnel bombs by opposition forces in Aleppo, primarily Salafi-Jihadi factions, represents a probable reprisal against regime airstrikes (esp. barrel bombs) in residential areas. 

New information was posted online that highlights another source of heritage damage in Syria that has received relatively little attention: the looting of excavation storehouses. The storage facilities of the famous Tell Sabi Abyad expedition were looted and vandalized in Raqqa Governorate. The excavations at Tell Sabi Abyad have played a crucial role in our understanding of early village life in the ancient Near East during the late Neolithic and Halaf periods — an important developmental period in the emergence of societal complexity leading to the world’s earliest civilizations. The site also yielded important Middle Assyrian (Late Bronze Age) remains. Such theft and vandalism of archaeological storage facilities threaten a multitude of scientifically collected datasets across Syria — the end product of years of meticulous archaeological fieldwork. 

Multiple sources also posted evidence that strongly suggests that ISIL is granting licenses to loot archaeological sites, specifically in this instance the site of Mari in Deir ez-Zor Governorate. High- resolution satellite imagery of Mari shows that the site has been heavily looted and that the nearby mound of Tell Madquq has been bulldozed (see below). Narrative reports and other reports gathered by ASOR CHI corroborate ISIL’s indirect involvement in promoting, facilitating, and taxing looting and antiquities trafficking and sales in the conflict zone. 

The House Foreign Affairs Committee unanimously passed the Protect and Preserve International Cultural Property Act of 2015 (H.R. 1493), which “will improve coordination of U.S. efforts to protect cultural property, and prevent those artifacts removed since the start of Syria’s civil war from being sold or imported into the United States.”