ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - The ministry of religious affairs in the Kurdistan Region warns that a biblical site in the country is on the verge of collapse, calling on the United Nations cultural body, UNESCO, for assistance.
Parts of the prehistoric shrine of the Jewish prophet Nahum, which dates back to around 600 BC and lies in the Alqush township in Nineveh province, has already collapsed and needs urgent restoration efforts, according to the ministry.
"We predict that it will collapse altogether in the foreseeable future if it is not restored," said Sherzad Mamsani, who is head of Jewish affairs in the ministry.
"We have already informed both regional and international groups concerned with historical sites and called for help," he added.
Mamsani said the Iraqi government had been unable to preserve the site and the Kurdish government in Erbil had no logistical or financial resources to save the shrine.
The site is located in a Christian area some 50 kilometers east of Mosul. The area is patrolled by the Kurdish Peshmerga forces since late 2014, after the Iraqi army withdrew from the Nineveh Plains following an offensive by Islamic State (ISIS) forces.
Mamsani said the vicinity of the shrine to ISIS-held Mosul has added to their fears, since the militants in the area have demolished several such sites in the past.
Nahum is mentioned in the Bible as a prophet who also predicted the fall of the Assyrian Empire. He is believed to have lived his entire life in the Nineveh Plains, where a sizeable Jewish community thrived until the Second World War, when the mass eviction of Jews from Iraq began.
Between 1948 and 1951, over 121,000 Jews left Iraq and Kurdistan for the Holy Land in the so- called Operation Ezra and Nehemiah as Israel airlifted tens of thousands of Jews following Iraqi government’s intensified persecution of Jews, after the creation of Israel.
Some 1,000 Jews still live in the Kurdistan region according to the Kurdish ministry of religious affairs, which in October 2014 designated two people to represent their fellow Jewish citizens in the ministry.
The Nahum shrine was partly renovated in 1976 but has virtually been unattended since then.
Parts of the Nineveh province are located in the so-called disputed areas, which both Baghdad and Erbil claim as theirs. Mamsani said the unresolved dispute has made it more complicated to seek help from either of the administrations.
"The Iraqi government has failed to preserve similar sites in the area, it is unlikely for Baghdad to start saving historical sites in this region now," Mamsani said, hoping UNESCO would soon attend to the warning about the collapsing site.
