AKIPRESS.COM - Nusra Front Islamist militants linked to al Qaeda have blown up the 13th century tomb of a revered Islamic scholar in southern Syria, Syrian state news agency SANA and monitoring group, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, reported.

The mausoleum of Imam Nawawi is in Nawa in Deraa province near the Jordanian border, a town captured by groups fighting the Syrian government in November.

The Nusra Front follows the same puritanical interpretation of Sunni Islam adopted by the Islamic State group that has also destroyed shrines in areas of eastern and northern Syria that it controls. They see tombs as sacrilegious, reports Reuters.