Syria reopens Damascus antiquities museum

Syria reopened a wing of the capital’s famed antiquities museum yesterday after six years of closure to protect its exhibits from rebel rocket fire in the civil war. Officials swung open the large wooden door of the building in central Damascus for the first time since 2012. On display were “some of the artefacts that used to be exhibited at the National Museum dating... from prehistory to the Islamic era”, antiquities official Ahmad Deeb said.

Authorities were working “to prepare the whole museum in the coming period” to be reopened, he said. Its gardens, however, remained open to the public, even as rockets intermittently hit Damascus from the rebel bastion of Eastern Ghouta, northeast of the capital. Syria is home to more than 700 archeological sites, many of which have been destroyed, damaged or looted since the start of the war.

All warring sides have been accused of looting artifacts during the conflict, from both major archeological sites and the country’s museums. From 2012 onwards, the museums authority stored some 300,000 items and thousands of manuscripts from around the country at secret locations protected from fires, shelling and floods.