The Secretary-General is outraged by the continuing destruction of cultural heritage in Iraq by ISIL, amid reports of the razing of the ancient city of Hatra, a UNESCO World Heritage Site in the north of the country.

The Secretary-General urgently calls on the international community to swiftly put a stop to such heinous terrorist activity and to counter the illicit traffic in cultural artifacts, as  demanded by Security Council resolutions 2170 (2014) and 2199 (2015).

The Secretary-General reiterates that the deliberate destruction of our common cultural heritage constitutes a war crime and that the perpetrators must be held to account.