Thieves made off with several ancient gold ingots from Syria’s national museum in Damascus, a security source and another close to the institution’s management said Tuesday.
The museum was spared during Syria’s destructive civil war that ran from 2011 to late last year, and houses priceless artefacts dating back to antiquity.
The robbery took place overnight from Sunday to Monday, with the source close to the management telling AFP that “six items were stolen from the so-called classical wing” — one of the museum’s most important sections, home to artefacts from the Hellenistic, Roman and Byzantine eras.
They described the items as gold ingots, without specifying their age or provenance.
The security source separately confirmed the details.
A manager at the museum declined to comment, saying only that the institution “is closed for security reasons and will reopen next week”.
Syrian authorities have also not officially confirmed the burglary.
Another security source said “several employees and guards at the museum were detained” after the theft, and were “subjected to interrogation before being released”.
An official from the department overseeing Syria’s museums told AFP on condition of anonymity that security forces had forbidden employees from entering the exhibition halls since the incident.
AFP journalists who visited the museum found it was closed — as it is every Tuesday — with no outward signs of anything amiss.
The national museum had shut its doors due to fears of looting shortly before longtime ruler Bashar al-Assad was deposed last December by an Islamist coalition. It reopened in January.
The institution’s collections include tens of thousands of items from Syria’s long history, ranging from prehistoric tools to Greco-Roman sculpture to pieces of Islamic art.
During the civil war, many pieces stored elsewhere in the country were brought to the facility for safekeeping.
The war saw archaeological sites bombed, museums looted and many artefacts stolen, generating millions of dollars for traffickers.
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