Oldest Christian monastery in Iraq is razed

This Oct. 1, 2006, photo provided by the U.S. Army Col. Juanita Chang shows St. Elijah’s Monastery on the outskirts of Mosul, Iraq. This month, at the request of AP, satellite imagery firm DigitalGlobe tasked a high resolution camera passing over the site to grab photos, and then pulled earlier images of the same spot from their vast archive of pictures. Imagery analyst Stephen Wood, CEO of Allsource Analysis, confirmed that the monastery is has been completely destroyed and identified the date of destruction between Aug. 27 and Sept. 28, 2014. AP

IRBIL, Iraq — The oldest Christian monastery in Iraq has been reduced to a field of rubble, yet another victim of the Islamic State’s relentless destruction of ancient cultural sites.

For 1,400 years the compound survived assaults by nature and man, standing as a place of worship recently for US troops. In earlier centuries, generations of monks tucked candles in the niches and prayed in the cool chapel. The Greek letters chi and rho, representing the first two letters of Christ’s name, were carved near the entrance.

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Now satellite photos obtained exclusively by The Associated Press confirm the worst fears of church authorities and preservationists — St. Elijah’s Monastery of Mosul has been completely wiped out.

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