ISIS captured the city in May 2015 and began blowing up some of the major landmarks at the UNESCO-listed world heritage site.

It used the 2,000-year-old Roman amphitheater to conduct public executions, with the blood of the victims staining the sand. Palmyra or Tadmur dates back 4,000 years but most of the ruins date from the Roman period.

In March this year Syrian Army Forces chased ISIS out of Palmyra. Now a video has emerged which shows them boasting of desecration.

Daesh (Islamic State, ISIS, ISIL and Daesh) destroyed the famous Arch of Triumph, the Temple of Baalshamin and the Temple of Bel and left mines and booby traps in much of the ruins.

They also looted the city's museums and the video shows them vandalising its precious exhibits.

ISIS's claims that anything non-Islamic is heresy and must be destroyed.It is the same Reason which led the Taliban to blow up the giant statues of the Buddha at Bamiyan in Afghanistan in 2001.

In August 2015 ISIS beheaded the city's 81-year-old chief archaeologist Khaled Asaad. They were finally forced out of the area by the forces of Bashar al-Assad in March this year.

Russian drone footage, filmed shortly after it was recaptured, showed some parts of the ruins had escaped destruction.

Many of Palmyra's temples and tombs were dynamited by ISIS in what the United Nations described as a war crime.

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