Taliban show destroyed Buddhas

Some 20 foreign journalists were on Monday given their first glimpse of where two towering Buddha statues once stood in the central Afghan province of Bamiyan after the Taliban, using rocket launchers and heavy machine guns, systematically destroyed what they deemed idolatrous.

A 1,500 year-old statue, taller than the Statue of Liberty in New York's harbour, was a heap of stone, while the other, except for a few stone folds of its robe, lay destroyed, AP reported on Tuesday. Orders to destroy the statues were given by Taliban's reclusive leader, Mullah Mohammad Omar, earlier last month, who declared all such statues heathen and contrary to Islamic beliefs.

Faiz Ahmad Faiz, chief of the foreign ministry's press department, told reporters the destruction was not intended to offend any religious group, and the move was strictly a "domestic matter of Afghanistan", the report added. Meanwhile, the BBC on Sunday quoted Sri Lankan Buddhists as saying that they would build replicas of the two ancient statues in Bamiyan if they received the necessary public donations to enable them to do so.

Following the strong international outcry over the destruction of the statues, the private Mahi Bodhi Society said it would initially build a scaled-down version of the larger statue so that future generations would know what it looked like, the report added.

The Sri Lankan government had offered to buy the rubble and remains of any destroyed statues, and was currently negotiating with other countries to buy such Afghan statues as remained undamaged, it said.