The militants seized Palmyra last summer, destroying the temples of Bel and Baal Shamin in the ancient city, considered nearly two millennia old. The United Nations described the act as a war crime.
On Saturday, Syria’s head of antiquities, Mamoun Abdelkarim, said his government would try and restore the temples, including an arch and funeral towers that the extremists destroyed in the world heritage site.
“We will rebuild them with the stones that remain, and with the remaining columns,” Abdelkarim told Reuters in Damascus, adding that his team would “bring life back to Palmyra.”