The Taliban are reported to be using rockets and tank shells to destroy ancient Buddha statues in central Bamiyan province tonight in compliance with a decree issued Monday by Supreme Leader Mullah Mohammad Omar.
Minister of Information and Culture Mr Qudratullah Jamal on Thursday said historic statues in the Kabul museum and elsewhere in the provinces of Ghazni, Herat, Jalalabad and Kandahar were also being destroyed.
Mullah Omar said the decision was in line with a fatwa from local Islamic clerics designed to prevent the worshipping of "false idols."
The Council of Europe Secretary General Mr Walter Schwimmer denounced the destruction. "No political or religious power has the right to deliberately destroy cultural property that belongs to humankind, or to deprive future generations of a heritage which is simply not the prerogative of a single group, ideology or faith," Mr Schwimmer said in a statement.
The UN Secretary General Mr Kofi Annan has asked Afghanistan's ruling Taliban to accept an offer by New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art to house statues destined for destruction.
"The secretary general received a call from the director of the Met, Phillipe de Montebello, who made an offer to field a team to remove at all cost all moveable sculptures from Afghanistan," a spokesman said.
He said Mr Annan had asked his special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan's military ruler, General Pervez Musharraf, "to press this offer with the Taliban authorities."
AFP