Last week’s Israeli airstrikes on Yemen have damaged the national museum in Sana’a, the Houthi culture ministry says.
Associated Press video footage of the site on 11 September shows damage to the building’s facade, including shattered windows and doors. The status of the artefacts inside the museum currently remains unclear.
Amida Sholan, an archaeologist and professor at Sana’a University, told The Art Newspaper that damage ‘extended to the museum’s main hall, where a number of artefacts and photographs are on display, as well as to the museum’s doors, windows, and storage rooms’.
Sholan also expressed concerns that the collection – including sculptures from pre-Islamic periods and various ancient artefacts – could now be at risk of looting due to compromised security.
The Houthi ministry has called on UNESCO to intervene to help protect the collection and the early-twentieth-century building, which was later established as a museum in 1971.
The airstrikes on the capital and the northern province of al-Jawf killed 46 people and wounded 165 others, Reuters reports.
