Iraq
It has been confirmed by the Independent’s correspondent in Iraq that Ur of the Chaldees, believed to be the world’s first city, has escaped destruction, despite being positioned within a major Iraqi airbase, with the ziggurat in use as the platform for an anti-aircraft battery.
The ziggurat was the target of the Americans’ 101st Airborne Division, but it was spotted on a map by an officer seconds before Colonel David Wood gave the order to open fire. The monument had been targeted, together with bunkers and other military installations.
Around the ziggurat, some of the l00-feet deep tombs are apparently on the verge of collapse, and mounds of pottery are threatening to slide back into the holes from which archaeologists had retrieved them.
Originally appeared in The Art Newspaper as '"Sir, sir! Don’t fire! That’s Ur"'