🔗 Share this article

Valuable artifacts and cultural objects have been stolen from the National Museum of Syria in the capital, sources confirm.

The theft was noticed on the start of the week, when museum workers allegedly found that an entrance had been broken from the inside.

The multiple taken pieces were made of marble and originated to the Roman era, one official told the Associated Press.

The nation's antiquities authority said it had launched a probe to identify the "details surrounding the theft of a collection of exhibits", and that actions had been enacted to strengthen security and monitoring systems.

The chief of domestic security in Damascus province, Brig-Gen Osama Atkeh, was referenced by the state-run Sana news agency as declaring that authorities were investigating the robbery, which he said had focused on several "ancient sculptures and unique items".

He added that guards at the institution and other individuals were being questioned.

The Damascus Museum, which was founded in 1919, holds the primary archaeological collection in Syria.

It contains clay cuneiform tablets tracing back to the 14th Century BC from an ancient city, where evidence of the oldest known complete alphabet was found; Greco-Roman period classical statues from historical site, among the foremost ancient sites of the classical era; and a ancient synagogue that was built at another archaeological site.

The facility was forced to close in the early 2010s, one year after the start of the destructive conflict. Most of the artifacts was removed and stored at secret locations to safeguard them.

It partially resumed in 2018 and returned to normal in early this year, a month after rebel forces overthrew the Assad regime.

Each of the six of Syria's Unesco World Heritage sites were affected or partly ruined during the conflict.

The militant faction blew up numerous temples and other structures at the ancient city, claiming that they were un-Islamic. The cultural organization denounced the destruction as a atrocity.

Many cultural items were also destroyed or taken from historical locations and cultural institutions.