-Caveat Lector- http://www.cnn.com/2001/WORLD/asiapcf/south/03/03/afghan.buddhas/index.html Taleban says most of ancient Buddhas destroyed Afghanistan's ruling Taleban said Saturday it has blown up most of the massive, ancient Buddhas at Bamiyan despite worldwide pleas to spare them. Taleban Information Minister Qudratullah Jamal said Saturday that the fundamentalist Muslim movement's troops used rockets and mortars to destroy the head and legs of the sandstone statues, which are carved into the side of a cliff in central Afghanistan. <A HREF="http://www.cnn.com/2001/WORLD/asiapcf/south/03/03/afghan.buddhas/map.afghanistan.kabul.gif">Afghanistan</A>. "Our soldiers are working hard to demolish their remaining parts. They will come down soon," Jamal said. No independent confirmation of Jamal's comments was available, but they came after several reports that demolition of the statues had begun Friday. The Taleban, which rules more than 90 percent of the country, has ordered the statues destroyed as part of a campaign to rid the country of idolatrous and "un-Islamic" representations of the human form -- an interpretation even many Muslim countries have criticized. In addition, more than half of the country's pre-Islamic "idols" have been smashed at historic sites around Afghanistan, Jamal said. "They were easy to break apart and did not take much time," he said. The 50-meter (175-foot) and 36-meter (120-foot) Bamiyan statues are believed to have been built in the Third Century in a combination of Asian and European styles. Archaeologists, museum curators and scholars around the world have urged the Taleban to spare them. The Taleban has imposed an austere Islamic code on Afghanistan since it conquered most of the country in 1996, and the fundamentalist Muslim movement has refused pleas -- even from its closest ally, Pakistan -- to stop the destruction. "Respect for other religions and their beliefs is enjoined upon all Muslims," Shamshad Ahmad, Pakistan's ambassador to the United Nations, said Friday. "Islam is the religion of peace." The U.N. cultural agency UNESCO said Afghanistan's location on the ancient Silk Roads through central Asia give it a unique history influenced by ancient Persia and Greece and the rise of Hinduism, Buddhism and Islam. Phillippe de Montebello, director of New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art, said the relics targeted by the Taleban are "not theirs to condemn and destroy." A Buddhist monk beats up a burning effigy symbolizing Afghanistan's Taleban regime, in Bombay, India, on Saturday "In one fell swoop, what the Taleban are threatening to do is to eradicate the very identity of a people and a major chapter in the history of mankind," de Montebello said. International envoys still hold out hope that the destruction of Afghanistan's antiquities can be stopped. But they have found themselves stymied by apparent differences within the Taleban. Some officials have raised the possibility that some of Afghanistan's relics could be handed over to a third country for protection even as Jamal said the destruction was well under way. Some diplomats say the statues' destruction will only cement the Taleban's isolation from the world community at a time when ordinary Afghans are suffering from famine and the lingering effects of two decades of civil war. Taleban fighters are still battling an opposition movement in the northern mountains led by Ahmed Shah Masood, a hero of the war against the Soviet occupation in the 1980s. Afghanistan is under U.N. sanctions aimed at forcing the Taleban to hand over suspected terrorist leader Osama bin Laden, who is believed to be living there. "We are really shocked at what is going on about statues in Afghanistan," said Enrico De Maio, Italy's ambassador to Pakistan. 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