The great citadel of Aleppo has the grim distinction of being the world’s only ancient fortress that is back in action today as a garrison and artillery battery in the midst of war. In the ruins of arsenals, dungeons and palaces from earlier centuries, troops loyal to President Bashar al-Assad are wreaking destruction on enemies in the plain below, as though the Middle Ages had never ended. The slits in the walls which used to allow archers to launch their arrows at attackers are now used by Syrian government marksmen with sophisticated sniper rifles, safely taking aim at targets in the streets beneath them. Artillery rounds are regularly fired at Islamist rebel fighters from positions inside the castle grounds.

Read More: Syria’s War-Scarred Citadel of Aleppo

One must dodge sniper bullets these days to get to the Aleppo National Museum, located on the edge of the historic center of this war-torn northern Syrian city. Inside, the place looks more like a bunker than a cultural institution housing treasures from archaeological excavations across northern and eastern Syria over the past 100 years. In the courtyard, a massive basalt stone lion from Arslan Tash — the site of an Iron Age kingdom east of Aleppo conquered by the Assyrians in the 9th century B.C. — is now almost completely covered with bags filled with sand and pebbles to protect it from mortars and rockets that often crash into the museum’s courtyard.

Read More: Amid Devastation of Aleppo, Syria, Archaeological Museum Fights to Preserve Heritage

More than 5,000 years ago, an army from the Mesopotamian city state of Uruk marched north and destroyed a prosperous rival city, Hamoukar, using slings and clay projectiles to massacre residents before burning it to the ground. Archaeologists say the battle was perhaps the first instance of large-scale, organised warfare in human history, and it occurred in a corner of north-east Syria that, millennia later, is again soaked in blood as the country’s civil war grinds on. Besides claiming more than 120,000 lives since March 2011, the war has taken a heavy toll on Syria’s rich historical heritage.

Read More: Amid Civil War, A Battle to Preserve Syria’s Historical Heritage

Besides killing more than 100,000 people, Syria’s civil war is exacting another irreparable toll as historic sites and artworks are looted or destroyed in the fighting. An emergency list of endangered artworks was released Wednesday [25 September 2013] at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. The initiative stems from the International Council of Museums, in collaboration with UNESCO and the US State Department.

Read More: Centuries of Syria’s History Destroyed in Just Two Years

The minaret of Aleppo’s ancient Umayyad mosque has been destroyed, Syrian state media and activists say, with the regime and the opposition blaming each other. The mosque, in Aleppo’s UNESCO-listed Old City, has been the centre of fighting for months and had already suffered extensive damage.

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To the caches of ammunition and medicines that they lug each day from this border city back into their homeland, Syrian rebels have added new tools to support their fight against President Bashar al-Assad: metal detectors and pickaxes. The rebels, struggling to finance their effort, have joined an emerging trade in illicitly acquired Syrian artifacts and antiquities, selling off the country’s past as the war for its future intensifies.

Read More: Syrian Rebels Loot Artifacts

A report by the Syrian Historical Heritage Under Threat, an international non-governmental organization, lists 12 museums throughout Syria, including the museum in Maarat al-Nu’man, that are under threat. The same report lists 24 archaeological sites, 11 centuries-old fortresses, 14 historical mosques, five ancient churches and four historical districts threatened by a combination of aerial bombings, illegal excavations, looting, vandalism, illicit trafficking of cultural property and the installation of heavy weapons.

Read More: Archaeological Heritage of Syria in Danger

Abu Khaled knows the worth of things. As a small-time smuggler living along the porous border between Syria and Lebanon, he has dabbled in antiquities as much as the cigarettes, stolen goods and weapons that make up the bulk of his trade. So when a smuggler from Syria brought him a small, alabaster statue of a seated man, he figured that the carving, most likely looted from one of Syria’s two dozen heritage museums or one of its hundreds of archaeological sites, could be worth a couple thousand dollars in Lebanon’s antiquities black market.

Read More: Syria’s Looted Past

Since the war in Syria began in March 2011, the UN estimates that 60,000 people have died. But the story does not end with this tragic human cost. The irreversible destruction of Syria’s heritage continues.

Read More: Another Casualty of Syria’s War