ST. PETERSBURG, February 10. /TASS/. A special Russian archaeological team is ready to go to Syria to survey historical monuments damaged in the devastating earthquake, Natalia Solovyova, head of the rescue archaeology center at the Institute for the History of Material Culture of the Russian Academy of Sciences, told TASS on Friday.
"The rescue archaeology center possesses technologies for working with damaged monuments. We gained good experience while working at Palmyra’s Arch of Triumph after its barbarous destruction. Today, the entire team of the rescue archaeology center is ready to go to Aleppo. We have all the necessary equipment and specialists," she said.
"We are most concerned about the Citadel of Aleppo, which is reportedly cracked. Naturally, there are more damaged monuments in Aleppo. Of serious concern are the Dead Cities in northern Syria (ruins of Late Antiquity settlements - TASS) - there are many UNESCO World Heritage Sites there, which suffered from the war and now there is more destruction. There are reports that an ancient theater in Jabla, which was restored not long ago, has been damaged, we know that tremors reached Tartus," she noted.
However, in her words, Syrian specialists don’t have a clear picture of the current state of cultural heritage monuments. "It is difficult to say anything definite now although I speak with Syrian colleagues practically every day. I ask them about their state but monitoring has not yet been conducted. We are ready to do it and we have informed our Syrian colleagues about this," Solovyova said, adding that the Syrian side welcomes this initiative but no decision has been made as of yet.
"Naturally, all efforts are focused on saving people. But the time will come for this work too and we are ready to use our knowledge and expertise to save monuments of cultural heritage," she stressed.
The center previously implemented several projects to save famous archaeological monuments in Syria. Specialists from the center made a 3D model of ancient Palmyra and surveyed Early Christian temples in Syria, including in Aleppo.
A powerful 7.7-magnitude earthquake rocked Turkey’s Kahramanmaras province, located in the country’s southeast, on February 6. The tremors, followed by hundreds of aftershocks, were felt in ten provinces as well as in neighboring countries, including Syria. According to the latest data, more than 20,000 people were killed and more than 70,000 were injured in the quake in the two countries.