Israel Bombs Baalbek, Lebanon’s UNESCO Word Heritage Site

3 mins

The 3,000 year old Roman temples in Baalbek are threatened by airstrikes

Israel has launched heavy airstrikes on the historic city of Baalbek city in Lebanon, home to some of the world’s best-preserved Roman temples and a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

In addition to the city, attacks targeted surrounding villages in the eastern Bekaa region of the country.

Earlier, the Israeli military called on residents of Baalbek and several neighboring communities in eastern Lebanon to leave their homes, saying it wanted to carry out military operations against Hezbollah in the region.

Roads out of the country’s main eastern city were quickly jammed with fleeing vehicles after Israel’s evacuation notice. Civil defence officials drove around the city urging everyone to leave immediately over loudspeaker, while mosques and churches delivered the same message.

Plumes of smoke could be seen rising over the historic city after the mayor, Mustafa al-Chal, said it had been repeatedly hit.

The evacuation order was the first given for Baalbek since the start of Israel’s air and land offensive against Hezbollah in southern Lebanon.

It came two days after airstrikes reportedly killed dozens of people in and around the city, which had a population of 80,000 before the conflict and is an important urban centre in the Bekaa Valley.

Protecting Baalbek

A major centre for cultural tourism prior to the conflict the ruins at Baalbeck are mostly Roman – but the site itself has relics thousands of years older than the time of the Caesars.

The name ‘Baalbek’ is derived from ‘Baal’, which means deity, and ‘Bek/Bekaa’ which refers to the Bekaa Valley, reflecting both religious and geographical significance. It was designated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1984.

Baalbek ruoman ruins

The original 11,000-year-old Phoenician city became one of the most celebrated sanctuaries of the ancient world, acting a trading point linking east and west including the Egyptian civilisation of the pharaohs and the empire forged by Alexander the Great.

In the coming centuries, as the Roman Empire became the dominant power, people flocked to the city to worship at the temples of Jupiter, Bacchus and Venus, which are 3,000 years old, constructed when the city was known under the Romanised name Heliopolis.

The 1954 Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict calls for protection of cultural property.. in times of peace as well as during an armed conflict

The UN urged the protection of the important cultural heritage sites via social media.

In a post on X featuring the Temple of Jupiter at Baalbek, UNESCO ‘recalls to all parties their obligation to respect and protect the integrity of these sites. They are the #heritage of all humanity and should never be targeted.’

Lebanese Culture Minister Mohammad Mortada had also written to UNESCO asking that urgent international steps be taken to protect cultural sites.

The 1954 Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict calls for protection of cultural property such as archaeological sites and monuments of architecture in times of peace as well as during an armed conflict.

The commitments made by the 82 state parties of the convention include ‘marking certain important buildings and monuments with a distinctive emblem of the convention.’ The convention’s emblem is known internationally as the Blue Shield, as specified in the 1999 Second Protocol to the 1954 Hague Convention, which the Lebanese Parliament ratified in 2019.

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