Islamic extremists target world's priceless treasures

From Mali to Afghanistan, Syria and Iraq, extremist fighters have regularly turned their sights on the priceless vestiges of peoples' cultural heritage - for being un-Islamic.

The International Criminal Court on Monday will open the trial of Ahmad Al-Faqi Al-Mahdi, an extremist on a charge of war crimes for the destruction of shrines at the World Heritage site of Timbuktu in Mali.

The following are examples of world cultural heritage destroyed or damaged during recent conflicts.

Mali

The fabled desert city of Timbuktu, named as the "City of 333 saints" and listed by UNESCO, was for months attacked by extremists bent on imposing a brutal version of Islamic law.

In June 2012, al-Qaida-linked militants destroyed 14 of the northern city's mausoleums, important buildings that date back to Timbuktu's golden age in the 15th and 16th centuries as an economic, intellectual and spiritual hub.

Syria

More than 900 monuments or archaeological sites have been looted, damaged or destroyed in Syria, where a devastating war has raged since 2011. In September 2015, Islamic State fighters destroyed two of the most important temples in the UNESCO-listed Syrian city of Palmyra as they pressed a campaign to wipe out some of the Middle East's most important heritage sites.

Iraq

The IS group has carried out a campaign of "cultural cleansing", razing part of ancient Mesopotamia's relics and looting others to sell valued artifactsfacts on the black market.

In a video released by the IS group on Feb 26, 2015, militants were shown using sledgehammers to smash pre-Islamic treasures in the museum in the country's second city Mosul, sparking global outrage.

Thousands of books and rare manuscripts were also burned in February in Mosul's library.

Libya

Several mausoleums have been destroyed by Islamic extremists since the overthrow of longtime dictator Muammar Gadhafi in 2011.

In August 2012, Islamist hardliners bulldozed part of the mausoleum of Al-Shaab Al-Dahman, close to the center of the Libyan capital.

Afghanistan

In March 2001, Taliban leader Mullah Omar ordered the destruction of two 1,500-year-old Buddha statues in the eastern town of Bamiyan, because they were judged to be anti-Islamic.

Hundreds of members of the Taliban from across the country spent more than three weeks demolishing the gigantic statues carved into the side of a cliff.

In 2003 the cultural landscape and archaeological remains of the Bamiyan Valley were put on UNESCO'S world heritage list.