A charity dedicated to maintaining Edinburgh's heritage has offered to help the restoration of several of Syria's cultural sites.
Edinburgh World Heritage has offered to help the work of Professor Maamoun Adbulkarim, director-general of antiquities and museums, who this week called for help to protect the country's heritage.
In addition to the damage to the ancient site of Palmyra, many of Syria’s urban World Heritage sites have also been damaged through shelling, looting and military occupation.
Adam Wilkinson, director of Edinburgh World Heritage, said: "Syria is home to some of the world’s most important archaeology, monuments and ancient cities which bear rich testimony to the development of human civilisation.
"Edinburgh leads the world in community-based heritage conservation within dynamic urban environments, and stands ready to help the communities of Syria conserve and restore its urban heritage".
Professor Maamoun Abdulkarim said: "We welcome Edinburgh World Heritage’s offer of help.
"Syria’s heritage belongs to its people, and to the people of the world.
"I look forward to building closer ties with the people of Edinburgh in the future."
Edinburgh World Heritage is an independent charity with the aim of "ensuring the city’s World Heritage status is a positive force for good that benefits everyone."
This week, Professor Abdulkarim said that in the current "tragedy" of conflict in the country, more than 300 sites had been destroyed or severely harmed by the warfare.
He said that the most famous of these, the ruins of ancient city Palmyra, are 80% "good" despite being targeted for destruction by Islamic State (IS), and 400 statues and 1000 objects from the city are currently safe in Damascus.
The archaeologist said he had excellent relations with universities in London and elsewhere but added: "We need help from Scotland, from [elsewhere in] the UK, from France and Germany.
"We need the visit of scientists, to exchange with us scientific ideas, from Scotland's laboratories and museums, from UK, from Italy - sometimes they cannot come to Damascus, but perhaps we can meet in Beirut."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here