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Saudi Iraq Border Skyship Security
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Iraq War:Iraqi Army in ecstatic spirit to crush the #ISIS takfiris
Iraq War:Iraqi Army in ecstatic spirit to crush the #ISIS takfiris Iraq War:Iraqi Army in ecstatic spirit to crush the #ISIS takfiris Iraq War:Iraqi Army in ecstatic spirit to crush the #ISIS...

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Iraq War:Iraqi Army in ecstatic spirit to crush the #ISIS takfiris - Video

By Bram Janssen and Sameer N. Yacoub The Associated Press

Raad Abdul-Ahed shows a centuries-old biblical tome hand-written in old Syriac language. (Bram Janssen, The Associated Press)

MAR MATTI MONASTERY, Iraq As Islamic State terrorists advanced toward this monastery perched on a mountain in northern Iraq, the monks rushed to protect a cherished piece of their heritage: their library of centuries-old Christian manuscripts.

Dozens of the handwritten tomes were spirited to safety in nearby Kurdish-ruled areas. There they remain, hidden in a nondescript apartment in the Kurdish city of Dohuk, where Christians who have fled the terrorists' onslaught are living and watching over them.

The Associated Press was allowed rare access to the library, a collection of copies of Bibles and biblical commentaries, mostly written in Syriac a form of the ancient Semitic Aramaic language and mostly dating back 400 to 500 years. The oldest is a copy of Saint Paul's letters, about 1,100 years old. The bound tomes, some with tattered pages written in black and red ink, lie on shelves.

Their rescue is a bright spot in the devastating onslaught by the Sunni terrorists against Iraq's people particularly religious and ethnic minorities and Iraq's heritage, as they took over much of northern and western Iraq the past year.

When they captured Iraq's second largest city, Mosul, and other parts of the north last summer, most Christians and other minorities fled the city and nearby towns for the Kurdish autonomous zone farther north.

The terrorists seized churches and monasteries in and around Mosul, removing symbols of Christianity and blowing some up. They also have attacked Sunni Muslim shrines they consider idolatrous.

In recent months, they have accelerated their campaign to destroy more ancient sites, including the 3,000-year-old ruins of Nimrud. They shattered artifacts in Mosul's museum and burned hundreds of books at Mosul's library and university, including rare manuscripts.

The Syriac Orthodox Christians of Mar Matti, a monastery that dates to the 4th century, moved to rescue their library of about 80 manuscripts in August, at the height of the Islamic State group's blitz, when its fighters were bearing down from Mosul to the north, toward the monastery, 20 miles from the city. Their advance was halted by Kurdish pershmerga fighters, who now hold the road leading to the monastery.

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Monks save historic Christian library from terrorists in Iraq

TIKRIT, Iraq, April 4 (UPI) -- Iraq is reportedly withdrawing Shia militias from Tikrit three days after the city's capture amid reports of looting, arson and executions of enemy combatants.

The birthplace of late Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, Tikrit remains largely empty after Iraqi security forces -- bolstered by Iran-supported Shia militias and U.S. airstrikes -- captured the Islamic State-controlled city on April 1 after a month of fighting.

Iraqi soldiers told the BBC that IS forces, which have now reportedly been pushed 27 miles away, boobytrapped several buildings with improvised explosive devices before retreating.

Locals say Shia militias making up the Popular Mobilisation (Hasid Shaabi) force -- which accounts for at least two-thirds of the 30,000-strong contingent the Iraqi government sent to Tikrit in early March -- have looted government buildings and stolen vehicles.

Local Sunni politicians and security officials say mobs have burned hundreds of homes in the city, while reports have arisen of Iraqi police executing an Egyptian IS fighter before a crowd and Shia paramilitaries dragging the corpse of another IS fighter behind a truck.

Iraqi Prime Minister Haider Al-Abadi ordered the arrest of looters and for the paramilitaries to withdraw to positions outside of Tikrit Saturday after meeting with officials from Salahuddin province. Government officials have reportedly blamed the looting and violence on local Sunni tribal fighters.

After committing to the Tikrit assault on March 1, al-Abadi originally refused assistance from coalition air-power, but IS forces in the city repositioned and entrenched. Concern over heavy casualties prompted al-Abadi to pause for several weeks before requesting -- and receiving -- U.S. air support.

"To be clear, the coalition is only coordinating with the government of Iraq and the Iraqi security forces; we do not coordinate our operations in any way with Iran or Iranian-backed militias," U.S. Central Command spokesman Col. Patrick Ryder said on March 25.

Last month the Iraqi military said it would withdraw Shia militias from Tikrit, but the process moved slowly, according to The New York Times, since the militiamen's willingness to fight generally outweighed that of the regular army.

"They need us here," The Times quoted a Shia militiaman from the Qataba Brigade as saying on March 28.

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Iraq pulls Shia militias from Tikrit amid reports of looting, arson, executions

Another ancient city has fallen into the destructive hands of the Islamic State.

A new video, uploaded April 3, appears to show militants smashing walls with sledgehammers and firing at statues with AK-47s in the ancient Iraq city of Hatra, a UNESCO world heritage site.

The footage reveals the extremist groups latest efforts in its purge of Iraq and Syrias cultural heritage particularly ancient relics that the group regards as false idols, based on their strict interpretation of Islamic law.

Running just over seven minutes, the video includes aerial scenes of the site and footage of militants taking hammer, pickaxe, and gun to 2,000-year-old statues and carvings, all to the sound of militaristic musical scoring. One jihadist, speaking Arabic with a Gulf accent, said they destroyed the site because it is worshipped instead of God, according to The Associated Press.

The video supports a previous AP report,which said that residents living near Hatra, located some 290 kilometers northwest of Baghdad, heard large explosions and saw bulldozers razing the site.

Once a large fortified city under the rule of the Parthian Empire, Hatra was the capital of the first Arab kingdom and withstood Roman invasions in 198 and 116 AD, according to UNESCO. Its destruction represents the latest Islamic State attack against the regions cultural heritage attacks that UNESCO Director-General Irina Bokov has denounced as war crimes.

[N]othing is safe from the cultural cleansing underway in the country: it targets human lives, minorities, and is marked by the systematic destruction of humanitys ancient heritage,"Ms. Bokov said in a statement released in early March.

Bokov's reaction echoes that of archeologists, historians, and others who in the last few months have condemned videos showing Islamic State, or ISIS, crushing ancient artifacts, many of them in Mosul. But reports have surfaced that at least some of the relics the militants destroyed were actually copies: For instance, a number of statues and idols in the Mosul Museum, which ISIS targeted in February, were exact replicas of originals found in Baghdad, Deutsche Welle reported. In some cases, the artifacts were not destroyed but stolen and sold in the black market to help fund ISIS, the German publication continued.

That isn't to say the militants didn't manage to destroy any originals, the report noted. And in sabotaging the record of Iraqs past, ISIS is causing great damage to human history as a whole, Cornell University'sDirector of the Institute of Archaeology and Material StudiesSturt Manning wrote.

The smashed artifacts ... are the material record of humanity, Professor Manning explained in a CNN op-ed. They are not just for scholars, they are for everyone. They are the text of the past that helps define our future.

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Video shows Islamic State smashing ancient Iraq city. Real or fake?