美国有线新闻 CNN 伊拉克大量民众逃离摩苏尔 ISIS大肆破坏文物

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Thousands of Iraqi civilians¹, more than 2,300 over this weekend alone have fled the city of Mosul as the international battle rages on to take control of it back from ISIS terrorists. Mosul is the second largest city in Iraq. It's also ISIS's last major stronghold in the country. So, ridding it of ISIS control would be a major setback³ for the terrorist group, though it still controls other parts of Iraq and Syria.

The battle for Mosul has been going on for months. Over the past weekend, dozens of ISIS fighters have been killed in the battle, dozens of civilians have lost their lives.

And the toll⁴ is cultural as well. The United Nations says ISIS has done a lot of damage to Iraq's heritage, destroying religious and archeological sites, partly because they don't fit with ISIS's interpretation⁶ of Islam, partly because the terrorists have made money by selling Iraq's antiquities⁷ on the black market.

BEN WEDEMAN, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: In the spring of 2015, the extremists meticulously⁸ documented their destruction of the ruins of the ancient city of Nimrud, founded in the 13 century B.C.

They took their sledgehammers to the city's famous winged bulls, the lamassu, reducing them to a pile of rubble⁹. Iraqi forces recently retook Nimrud, just south of Mosul, we came to have a look — lone² visitors to a lone hilltop that hasn't seen a tourist in years.

The scale of the vandalism that took place here boggles the mind. Only ISIS could turn ruins into ruins. By some estimates in northern Iraq, the extremist group destroyed or severely¹⁰ damaged around 80 sites, archeological ones like this one, as well as Muslim and Christian¹¹ shrines¹².

Through the work lens of ISIS's logic⁵, all idols¹³ must be destroyed. Their every action here nothing less than utter contempt, for Iraq's rich multi-millennial history, and that includes the remains¹⁴ of the vast Assyrian empire that once stretched from the Persian Gulf¹⁵ to the Mediterranean¹⁶ Sea, the ruthless super power of its day.

The statues, the cuneiform inscriptions¹⁷ now lie in pieces exposed to the elements.

In ancient Mesopotamia, ordinary structures like houses or shops were made out of mud bricks. With time, they simply turned into dusts. But for the statues of the gods and the kings, they used stone. The purpose was that they would last for eternity¹⁸, that is until ISIS came along.

Archaeologists may someday be able to piece some of this together, but that won't happen until the war against ISIS comes to an end.