The National Museum of Yemen was damaged last Wednesday during a series of Israeli airstrikes on the country’s capital, Sanaa, according to the Houthi Ministry of Culture.
Israel has been in conflict with Yemen’s Houthi forces since the onset of the war in Gaza, with Wednesday’s bombardment of Sanaa, in which 45 people were killed and 165 injured, signaling an escalation of regional tensions. The Houthi-led government in the capital has since October 7, 2023, made clear its support for Palestine through missile strikes aimed at Israel.
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Video footage and images published by the Associated Press show Yemen’s national museum courtyard littered with rubble and promotional banners featuring works from its collections. The museum building is standing, though its windows and doors were destroyed.
The national museum reopened to the public in May 2023 after a decade-long closure caused by the war in Yemen. Since then, much of the government’s resources have been dedicated to the more than 4 million people internally displaced by the war, leaving Yemen’s rich archaeological properties and cultural venues vulnerable to looting and weathering. Originally opened in 1971, the museum is one of the largest of its kind in the region and houses millennia-old artifacts.
The Old City of Sanaa, a UNESCO World Heritage site, is located near the blasts but local reports say it escaped damage. The ancient Sanaa, which was inhabited for more than 2,500 years, became in the 8th and 7th centuries a consequential center for the propagation of Islam, and later a key inland trade hub. Its prominence attracted a diversity of cultures and religions, whose intermingling endures today in Sanaa’s renowned architecture—foremost its several-story tower-houses built from rammed earth and burnt brick.
The culture ministry has called on UNESCO to condemn the airstrike and to enact measures to ensure preservation of the country’s cultural property. UNESCO suspended its activities in Houthi-controlled areas after four members of its team were detained by Houthi forces. “UNESCO has not yet been able to verify the damages to cultural heritage as the organization has no presence in Sanaa,” a UNESCO spokesperson told the Art Newspaper.
The Houthi movement, originating in northern Yemen, displaced former Yemeni president Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi from the capital in 2014, a move denounced by the United Nations.