Eight-thousand-year-old carvings in stone have reportedly been destroyed in Morocco’s High Atlas Mountains by Salafists, Muslims who strictly prohibit idolatry. The carvings depicted the sun as a divinity. “One of the carvings, called the ‘plaque of the sun,’ predates the arrival of the Phoenicians in Morocco,” said Aboubakr Anghir of the Amazigh League for Human Rights. […]

The twelfth-century Umayyad Mosque in Aleppo’s walled Old City has been heavily damaged by fighting and fire this week. Rebel forces tried to push out government troops that have been camping in the mosque for months. The Old City is one of six UNESCO World Heritage sites in Syria; five of them have been damaged and […]