Daesh is selling stolen artifacts from a museum in Iraq’s Mosul city to buyers in Europe, an Iraqi deputy minister said Wednesday.
Qais Hussein Rashid, deputy minister of culture, told The Anadolu Agency that his ministry had information that the valuable artifacts were now being sold in Europe.
According to Rashid, Daesh was allegedly using such sales to generate money for the militant group. He added that Iraqi authorities were taking measures to retrieve the stolen art treasures.
On Feb. 26, a video published on social media showed Daesh smashing ancient statues with sledgehammers at the Mosul museum.
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon condemned Daesh’s "systematic" destruction of Iraq's cultural treasures.
Also, the Mosul library, home to some 8,000 historical texts, has also been burnt down. It had many hand-written books from the Ottoman, Abbasid and Ayyubid periods.
