PARIS: The head of UNESCO condemned on Friday the destruction of the ancient Assyrian city of Nimrud in Iraq by the Islamic State group, saying it amounted to a “war crime.”

“I condemn with the strongest force the destruction of the site at Nimrud,” Irina Bokova said in a statement. “We cannot stay silent. The deliberate destruction of cultural heritage constitutes a war crime, and I call on all political and religious leaders in the region to stand up against this new barbarity.”

Islamic State terrorists looted and bulldozed the ancient Assyrian city of Nimrud, the Iraqi government said, in their latest assault on some of the world’s greatest archaeological and cultural treasures.

A tribal source from Mosul said the ultra radicals, who dismiss Iraq’s pre-Islamic heritage as idolatrous, had pillaged the 3,000-year-old site on the banks of the Tigris river, once capital of the world’s most powerful empire.

Nimrud, about 30 km south of Mosul, was built around 1250 BC. Four centuries later it became capital of the neo-Assyrian empire — at the time the most powerful state on earth, extending to modern-day Egypt, Turkey and Iran.