Bulldozers, looting threaten Libya’s ancient treasures

The spectacular ruins of the ancient Greek city of Cyrene survived Libya's 2011 revolution and an ensuing decade of lawlessness, but today they face new threats: Plunder and bulldozers.

Under balmy spring sunshine, a handful of tourists take advantage of the North African country's months-old ceasefire to wander around the temple of Zeus, perched atop a wind-battered hill near the eastern end of Libya's Mediterranean coast. There are no queues here.

The scarce visitors - all Libyans - amble through the sanctuary of Apollo and the amphitheater, before visiting a museum housing faceless busts of Greek divinities and naked statues in marble.

Founded in the 7th century B.C., Cyrene "was one of the principal cities in the Hellenic world," according to the UN's cultural agency UNESCO, which added the site to its World Heritage List in 1992. "A thousand years of history is written into its ruins," it said.

Yet beyond the fence marking out the protected part of Cyrene, residents of modern-day Shahat are taking possession of lands held in trust by the state, then selling them on to property developers.

Other areas are being dug up by treasure-seekers hoping to smuggle looted artifacts to sell abroad.

"Some people are coming in and bulldozing areas containing artifacts, dividing them and selling them, then building housing blocks on top of these priceless sites," said Adel Abu Fejra, of the Cyrene department of antiquities.

Abu Fejra said his department "can't even measure" how much has been lost, as the plots "are outside the fenced area under our protection."

Cyrene lies between the Egyptian border and Benghazi, one of the key cities that rose up against longtime dictator Moamer Kadhafi in 2011.

The country...