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Meet the men taking up arms to protect the Middle East’s ancient treasures

That you need guns to protect ancient sites from Isis is a given — shamefully, you can’t rely on the West to help

12 September 2015

9:00 AM

12 September 2015

9:00 AM

Leptis Magna was deserted when I last visited — no wonder. Tourists daren’t visit Libya these days and so I had the ruins to myself. I climbed the steps of the vast Roman theatre, looked out to where the Wadi Lebda meets the sea, then stopped. Men with AK-47s. My immediate fear was that they were Islamic State.

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Kim Sengupta is defence and diplomatic correspondent of the Independent.

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