After failing to destroy the 1,700-year-old sandstone statues of Buddha with anti-aircraft and tank fire, the Taliban brought a lorryload of dynamite from Kabul. A Western observer said: “They drilled holes into the torsos of the two statues and then placed dynamite charges inside the holes to blow them up.”

The operation to wreck the statues carved into a cliff in the Bamiyan Valley in the Hindu Kush mountains of central Afghanistan was supervised by Mullah Obaidullah, the Taliban defence minister. There has been an international outcry since Mullah Mohammed Omar, the Taliban leader, issued a special edict on Feb 26 ordering the destruction of all non-Islamic statues.

Kofi Annan, the United Nations Secretary-General, had pleaded with the Taliban’s foreign minister, Wakil Ahmad Muttawakil, in Islamabad yesterday to save Afghanistan’s cultural heritage. He was told that all other “moveable statues” – including more than a dozen smaller Buddha statues in the Kabul Museum – had also been destroyed.