But the team wants more help from Facebook. In 2020, the social media behemoth banned the sale of historical antiquities on its platform but Paul says the policy is rarely enforced.

ATHAR co-director and Shawnee State University professor Amr Al-Azm, who had previously worked in Syria as an antiquities official, told the Times artifacts were also flowing from Yemen, Egypt ...

He faulted Facebook for not heeding warnings about antiquities sales as early as 2014, when it might have been possible to delete the groups to stop, or at least slow, their growth.

War-torn countries are having their cultural heritage destroyed with antiquities being looted and sold to generate money. In some cases, the plunder may constitute a war crime. Instability in ...

Now there are at least 90 Facebook groups, most in Arabic, connected to the illegal trade in Middle Eastern antiquities, with tens of thousands of members, he said.

But keeping the art market free of "blood antiquities" is a task that should concern all interested parties, from auction houses and galleries to buyers and the general, art-loving public.