Turkish occupation destroys archaeological sites in Tal-Shorba, uprooting trees in Afrin

Tal-Shorba is located 20 km north of Afrin, and is administratively linked to the village of Kamruk and Simalka, about 700 meters from the village of Kamruk to the north of it, and it is one of the archaeological hills registered with the Ministry of Culture and the Syrian Antiquities Directorate by Resolution 244 / A issued in 1981.

The hill was subjected to sabotage excavations with heavy machineries, after occupying the Turkish occupation of Afrin canton, at the end of the second half of 2019, and the Antiquities Directorate in Afrin at the time provided documentation with photographs, on December 12, 2019.

During its follow-up and monitoring of Tal Shorba, the Directorate of Antiquities in occupied Afrin recently obtained a satellite image, dating back to the 28th of the same month, which proves that irrefutable evidence to this information.

The satellite image shows that the Turkish occupation carried out huge excavations over the entire area of ​​the high hill, and the destruction of the archaeological layers that contained them, in addition to the uprooting of many old olive trees on the northern and northwestern slope of the hill, and the extension of the excavations towards the largely low-lying city over large areas estimated at 2 Hectares, i.e. (20,000) square meters, while the area covered by these destructive excavations on the elevated hill is about 7,000 square meters, according to the surveyor of areas on the Google Earth program.

The Directorate indicated that they do not have any information about the depths and real area of ​​these sabotage excavations, the nature of the artifacts and materials that were extracted from the hill as a result of these excavations and how to dispose of them.

T/S
ANHA