‘No more Antakya’: Turks say the city, and a civilisation, was wiped out

 

 "Founded in 300 B.C. by a former general for Alexander the Great, Antakya has been around long enough to have been destroyed and rebuilt several times. The Greeks, Romans and Byzantines called it Antioch, and it was a trading center so powerful that it was once the Roman Empire’s third-largest city.

The modern city was built atop layers and layers of the ruins of long-gone civilizations. History still pokes through in many places: an early Christian church founded in a cave by Sts. Peter and Paul, ancient stone mosques in the oldest part of town, a stretch of fine Byzantine mosaics uncovered in the construction of a hotel.

But the long view held no comfort for those who got calls every few hours telling them that another loved one had died, a description that applied to most people in Antakya this week. And by Thursday, when they walked the streets, they no longer heard the calls of people trapped under the rubble.

“No more Antakya,” said Kazim Kuseyri, 41, the owner of Antakya’s most venerable hotel, the Savon, who was sleeping in a car in the hotel’s courtyard along with about 25 relatives, staff members and their relatives and friends. “I lost my friends. I lost the buildings where I ate and drank with my friends. I lost all my memories"

read newstory by VIVIAN YEE and NIMET KIRAC

‘No more Antakya’: Turks say the city, and a civilisation, was wiped out | World News,The Indian Express