ISIS fighters can be seen hammering and drilling away at sculptures and stone slabs believed to be some 3,000 years old in the ruins of the ancient Assyrian city of Nimrud, located near the Islamic State-controlled city of Mosul. 

The seven-minute expertly edited video, purportedly shows Islamic State destroying the relics before bulldozing and blowing up the ruins, completely obliterating the historic site.

The destruction at Nimrud, which took place last month, follows other attacks on cultural heritage sites carried out by the Islamic State, which now holds a third of Iraq and neighboring Syria in its self-declared caliphate.

The attack on the ancient site horrified archaeologists when it was first reported last month, and has been declared a 'war crime' by U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.

The seven-minute video, posted late Saturday, shows bearded militants using sledgehammers, jackhammers and saws to take down huge alabaster reliefs depicting Assyrian kings and deities. 

A bulldozer brings down walls, while militants fill barrels with explosives and later destroy three separate areas of the site in massive explosions.

'God has honored us in the Islamic State to remove all of these idols and statutes worshipped instead of Allah in the past days,' one militant says in the video. 

Another militant vows that 'whenever we seize a piece of land, we will remove signs of idolatry and spread monotheism.'  

It is believed parts of the footage may be from a nearby site as some of the figures in the Nimrud video appears to have rebar, ribbed steel bars designed to reinforce concrete that are a technique of modern building.

However, an Iraqi Antiquities Ministry official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said all the items at Nimrud were authentic. 

When the destruction was first reported several weeks ago a Mosul tribal leader confirmed that SIIS had 'looted the valuables in Nimrud and then proceeded to level the site to the ground. There used to be statues and walls as well as a castle that Islamic State has destroyed completely.'

'In a new crime in their series of reckless offenses they assaulted the ancient city of Nimrud and bulldozed it with heavy machinery, appropriating archaeological attractions dating back 13 centuries BC,' the United Nations cultural agency UNESCO said in a statement last month.

UNESCO head Irina Bokova added: 'This is yet another attack against the Iraqi people, reminding us that nothing is safe from the cultural cleansing under way in the country: it targets human lives, minorities, and is marked by the systematic destruction of humanity's ancient heritage,' she said  

(dailymail.co.uk)