ALALAM – Iraq

"Villagers nearby took the blast as an earthquake as the power of the blast was just like an earthquake," recalled Khaled Gabry, an armed personnel and resident.

Nimrud was built in the 13th century B.C., and started a large-scaled excavation in the 1950s, when a number of ivory and stone carvings were unearthed. It was praised as the Assyrian treasure.

The majority of the relics were stored in museums, but some were left in the site. Part of the wall of the ancient palace collapsed and the stone carvings on the wall were turned into a bunch of fragments.

Khaled said the terrorists once hid in Nimrud as it would not be air raided as a historical spot and they may loot the site and, with the stolen relics, exchanged for weapons.

"We don't know exact how many relics the extremists have taken away, but we know they took some portable and easy-to-smuggle cultural relics," said Khaled.

The ancient Nimrud used to be a complete city with prisons, wells, and a palace in the center. However, the palace was razed to the ground, and other things were also destroyed. Experts said they cannot repair the relics until the war ends.

In Iraq, there are still nearly registered 1,800 historical sites in the control by terrorists. Their whereabouts, therefore, are far beyond people's imagination.

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