The plume of smoke following the Israeli strike near the Baalbeck Citadel. Photo provided by our correspondent Sarah Abdallah.
"Such strikes could have a negative impact on the citadel," said Bachir Khodr, the governor of Baalbeck, referring to the Israeli strike that targeted the center of the main city of the Bekaa, near its famous archaeological site, on Sunday.
"The strike took place about 500 to 700 meters from the citadel, and did not target the citadel or its enclosure," he clarified in statements to AFP. However, he expressed concern about the effect that "the black smoke" could have on the state of the stones, or "the force of the explosions," whose tremors could affect the remains, including one of the best-preserved Roman temples in the world.
Listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1984, the citadel is equipped with a "Blue shield," a distinctive blue shield-shaped sign installed on all protected sites in Lebanon, in accordance with the 1954 Hague Convention on the "protection of cultural property in the event of armed conflict." Although ratified by the Lebanese Parliament in 2019, this was never adopted by Israel, which had damaged several heritage sites in southern Lebanon during the 2006 war, without ever being sanctioned.
