ERBIL: As Iraqi forces fight to retake the northern city of Mosul from the militant Islamic State group, an artist in nearby Erbil is chiseling at clay in a tiny, unheated studio to recreate historic Assyrian monuments destroyed by the group.

Ninos Thabet, an 18-year-old Christian who studied art at Mosul University, is creating miniature replicas of statues the jihadists destroyed when they overran the 3,000-year-old Assyrian city of Nimrud, south of Mosul, 2-1/2 years ago.

Once the capital of an empire stretching across the ancient Middle East, Nimrud is one of several historic sites that IS looted and ransacked when they seized large swathes of Iraq and neighbouring Syria in 2014.

The statues included winged bulls with human faces, known as lamassu, and a bronze head of King Sargon of Akkad.

“Seeing the antiquities of your country, a civilisation that is thousands of years old, destroyed within minutes is very painful,” he said during a visit to his studio. “It was difficult seeing such a setback to our culture and history.”

IS, whose ultra-hardline doctrine deems pre-Islamic religious heritage idolatrous, released video footage last year showing its fighters bulldozing, drilling and blowing up murals and statues at Nimrud.

Published in Dawn, January 17th, 2017