UN names 22 global cultural and natural treasures
Afp, Paris
Twenty-two sites -- ranging from a Roman palace to a modernist university campus to the embattled Iraqi city of Samarra -- have been granted the coveted World Heritage status by Unesco, the UN's culture organisation. Unesco also took the unprecedented step of removing a site from its list, punishing the government of Oman for failing to protect the Arabian Oryx Sanctuary where the Oryx population has dropped from several hundred to a few dozen in a decade and now faces extinction. The final list of sites was announced after a week of deliberations by a Unesco committee meeting in Christchurch, New Zealand. The body says the prestige of being added to the list helps raise awareness of the importance of protecting and conserving heritage sites. The Iraqi shrine city of Samarra, once a powerful Islamic capital and today the repeated target of sectarian bombings, was both listed as a World Heritage site and as a site in danger. A bombing in 2006 destroyed the shrine's golden dome and sparked Sunni-Shia reprisals that claimed tens of thousands of lives. A follow-up attack earlier this month destroyed the shrine's two gold-covered minarets.
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