The United Nations' Security Council has condemned the "barbaric terrorist acts" of the Islamic State militants, including the recent destruction of centuries-old religious and cultural artifacts in a Mosul museum.
The ultra-radical Islamic militant group, composed of hardliner Sunnis, released a video on Thursday which showed jihadists destroying the Iraqi artifacts, some of which are reportedly Assyrian and Akkadian antiquities dating back to 7th century BC.
An IS speaker appears in the beginning of the video justifying the vandalism saying "idol worship" was prohibited in Islam.
"The members of the Security Council strongly condemned the ongoing barbaric terrorist acts in Iraq by Islamic State," the UN council said in a statement.
The group "must be defeated and that the intolerance, violence, and hatred it espouses must be stamped out," the council said. It further said that the recent condemnable acts perpetrated by the dreaded jihadist group were the abduction of 100 Sunni tribesmen from the outskirts of Tikrit, and the burning alive of 45 Iraqis, reports Jerusalem Post.
The council also strongly condemned the "deliberate destruction of irreplaceable religious and cultural artifacts housed in the Mosul Museum and burning of thousands of books and rare manuscripts from the Mosul Library."
The five-minute video starts with a verse from the Quran which talks about "idol worship". A man then comes to the camera, condemns Assyrian and Akkadians as polytheists and justifies the destruction of the statues. He also describes the way prophet Muhammad destroyed the idols in Mecca and justifies the action.
"These statues and idols, these artifacts, if God has ordered its removal, they became worthless to us even if they are worth billions of dollars," the man says before the Isis fighters smashed the statues with hammers.
