, The Wall Street Journal said in news briefed by “Shafaq News”.

Sunni insurgents who took over Iraq's second-largest city, Mosul, and the antiquities-rich Nineveh province that surrounds it have published a decree announcing that they would destroy graves, shrines and other objects that offend their strict interpretation of Islamic law.

The insurgents, from the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham, or ISIS, have padlocked the doors of Mosul Museum and announced that they would await a fatwa, or Islamic judicial ruling, on whether to destroy the building's irreplaceable contents, Iraqi officials said.

A decade after the museum was looted in the chaotic weeks following the U.S.-led invasion of the country in 2003, Unesco and Iraqi officials are again raising the alarm over the fate of the country's antiquities and archaeological sites. But this time, with much of northern Iraq under ISIS control, Iraq's military in shambles and political uncertainty in Baghdad, experts say there is little they can do to protect many fine examples of Middle Eastern antiquity, The Wall Street said.

"Unfortunately, the fate of this cultural heritage doesn't look good," said Aymen Jawad, the executive director of Iraq Heritage, a not-for-profit advocacy group in Britain. "One of the world's oldest cities in the Middle East is about to turn into another cultural desert that radical groups are so efficient at creating, while the rest of the world sits and watches."

ISIS militants have a similarly austere view of art and antiquities as the Taliban and the Mali-based Islamist militia Ansar Dine, experts say. In 2001, the Taliban blew up two large statues of Buddha in Afghanistan's Bamiyan Valley. In 2012, Ansar Dine destroyed Sufi shrines in Timbuktu. Both were Unesco World Heritage Sites.

At stake in Iraq are nearly 1,800 sites in Mosul and 250 buildings in Nineveh province that the government classifies as historical, said Qais Hussein, the head of Iraq's State Board of Antiquities and Heritage.

The territories under ISIS control contain two Unesco World Heritage Sites—the Hatra and Ashour temples—and thousands of early and pre-Islamic texts and art objects dating to the ancient Assyrian and Akkadian civilizations, officials say.

Most worrying to archaeologists is the fate of Hatra, a sprawling, well-preserved complex that archaeologists believe was built in second or third century by the Seleucid Empire. The site is a tempting target for ISIS militants—who reject any man-made representation of God's creations—because of its stone statues of ancient gods and deities. The temple at Hatra was used as a backdrop in the opening scenes of the 1973 horror film "The Exorcist."

Mr. Hussein said he was also concerned over Nimrud, the site of many important statues of ancient Assyrian gods dating back more than 3,000 year, The Wall Street added.

Aside from intentional destruction, looting is also a serious concern, said Nada al-Hassan, the head of the Arab States Unit at Unesco's World Heritage Center. ISIS has profited from looting and trading antiquities in neighboring Syria, Unesco says, where it commands expansive territory.

ISIS's takeover of the northern Syrian city of Raqqa was followed by the looting of an important museum there, officials say. Some of those artifacts have surfaced in Turkey and Lebanon, where local law-enforcement officers returned them to Syria, Ms. Hassan said, but much of the rest has disappeared.

In an attempt to protect Iraq's heritage, Unesco issued an appeal to the combatants this month.

"I call on all actors to refrain from any form of destruction of cultural heritage, including religious sites," said Irina Bokova, Unesco director-general of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, or Unesco, referring to looting as a war crime. "Their perpetrators must be held responsible for their acts."

Ms. Hassan said the U.N. group was working with Interpol, the international policing agency, to alert neighboring countries to trafficking in artifacts.

Although some of the Mosul Museum's most valuable artifacts were moved to Baghdad's National Museum in the years after 2003, little is known about the well-being of the rest.

Mr. Hussein and other officials in Baghdad say communications with antiquities officials in Iraq's north is limited. Terrified curators and museum employees have been threatened and intimidated, and poor communications make it difficult for them to reach their supervisors in Baghdad, he said.

"I'm sure that if they continue to control this city, they will destroy all of those things," Mr. Hussein said. "They've already aggressively attacked our employees working in those sites and in the museums telling them that this is haram [forbidden] to work in a place with those statues and objects."