archaeology

"Baalbek is the major Roman site in Lebanon. You couldn't replace it if someone bombed it," says Graham Philip, an archaeology professor at Durham University.

Graham Philip, the Durham University archaeology professor, says he doesn’t believe Israel would intentionally hit Baalbek or other sites.

But Pradhananga said Nepal's Department of Archaeology had provided enough evidence, including archival records.

Nepal has categorised more than 400 artefacts missing from temples and monasteries across the country, but the number is highly likely to be an underestimate, says Saubhagya Pradhananga, who heads the official Department of Archaeology.

The discovery led by Mr Maksudov, director of Uzbekistan's National Center of Archaeology and Michael Frachetti, an archaeologist at Washington University in St Louis, was made possible with drones and a remote-sensing tool known as lidar, which uses reflected light to create three-dimensional mappings of the environment.