Islamic State beheads elderly archaeologist, hangs corpse in the historic site he loved

Islamic State (IS) militants have beheaded an elderly archaeologist in the ancient Syrian city of Palmyra and hung his body on a column in a main square of the historic site to which he devoted half a century of study, Syria’s antiquities chief said.

IS, whose insurgents control swathes of Syria and Iraq, captured Palmyra in central Syria from government forces in May, but are not known to have damaged its monumental Roman-era ruins despite their reputation for destroying artefacts they view as idolatrous under their puritanical interpretation of Islam.

Syrian state antiquities chief Maamoun Abdulkarim said on Tuesday the family of Khaled Asaad had informed him that the 82-year-old scholar who worked for over 50 years as head of antiquities in Palmyra was executed by Islamic State on Tuesday.

Asaad had been detained and interrogated for over a month by the ultra-radical Sunni Muslim militants, he said.

“Just imagine that such a scholar who gave such memorable services to the place and to history would be beheaded ... and his corpse still hanging from one of the ancient columns in the centre of a square in Palmyra,” Abdulkarim said.