The jihadist group released a seven-minute long video showing militants using sledgehammers and assault rifles to destroy ancient artefacts at a Unesco world heritage in Iraq.
"Islamic State has sent us to these idols to destroy them," says a rifle-toting militant in Hatra."We will destroy your artefacts and idols anywhere, and Islamic State will rule your lands."
Although Iraq's antiquities ministry reported damage to the 2,000-year old site last month, Isil's new video provides the first evidence of its partial destruction.
The film features footage of jihadists smashing monuments with pickaxes. At times, their blows yield what appears to be white chalk powder, suggesting that some of the artefacts are replicas or restored originals.
The ancient old site was once a thriving Mesopotamian oasis, welcoming caravans of camels carrying travellers between East and West. Saddam Hussein ordered a partial reconstruction of the city during the 1990s, with bricks bearing his name.
"Unfortunately, it seems that [Isil] has taken its place in a long line of empires that have sought to destroy the once prominent city," said Dr Kyle Erickson, Head of School & Lecturer in Classics at the University of Wales Trinity Saint David.
"In destroying the statues and site at Hatra, Isil is destroying an important part of Arab heritage from before the revelations to Muhammed."
The smashing of Hatra is just one in Isil's string of attacks on ancient heritage across Iraq and Syria, large swathes of which are under the group's control. In February, the extremists drew international ire by ransacking Mosul's central museum, destroying priceless artefacts dating back thousands of years.
The campaign of destruction continued on Easter Sunday, as militants partially blew up a church in the northeastern Syrian village of Tel Nasri. The village is close to Isil's battlefront with Kurdish forces which have slowed their advance through parts of Syria and Iraq.
The extent of Isil's murderous rampage across the region was apparent in the Iraqi city of Tikrit last week as soldiers and Shiite militiamen exhumed 300 bodies from the Speicher massacre, named after a nearby military base where Isil fighters abducted an estimated 1,500 Iraqi troops.
Although Tikrit has now been liberated, Isil is making unprecedented progress elsewhere. Up to two thousand people fled a sprawling refugee quarter in the Syrian capital, Damascus, on Sunday, as Isil consolidated its hold over the area.
Isil's march into Yarmouk marks its deepest foray yet into the capital. Opposition activists reported on Saturday that Isil had taken control of around ninety per cent of the area, compounding the most intense humanitarian nightmare of Syria's four-year civil war.
The United Nations says around 18,000 civilians, mostly of Palestinian descent, had been trapped in Yarmouk. The camp has been under government siege for nearly two years, leading to starvation and illnesses caused by lack of medical aid. The camp has also witnessed several rounds of ferocious and deadly fighting between government forces and militants.
Now, only the poorest remain. Most of the camp's estimated 160,000 inhabitants fled in late 2012 as clashes erupted between pro- and anti-regime Palestinian gunmen.
"It is a hellhole and a hellhole that shames the world," said Chris Gunness, spokesman for a spokesman for the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian refugees. "Yarmouk was already a place where women were dying in childbirth for lack of medicines and children were dying of malnutrition. Now it has been engulfed by conflict."
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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/islamic-state/11517350/Islamic-State-continues-depraved-destruction-of-historical-sites-and-churches.html