Baghdad (AFP) - The Islamic State group began bulldozing the ancient Assyrian city of Nimrud in Iraq on Thursday, the government said, in the jihadists' latest attack on the country's historical heritage.

IS "assaulted the historic city of Nimrud and bulldozed it with heavy vehicles," the tourism and antiquities ministry said on an official Facebook page.

An Iraqi antiquities official confirmed the news, saying the destruction began after noon prayers on Thursday and that trucks that may have been used to haul away artefacts had also been spotted at the site.

"Until now, we do not know to what extent it was destroyed," the official said on condition of anonymity.

Nimrud, one of the jewels of the Assyrian era, was founded in the 13th century BC and lies on the Tigris River around 30 kilometres (18 miles) southeast of Mosul, Iraq's second city and the main hub of IS in the country.

"I'm sorry to say everybody was expecting this. Their plan is to destroy Iraqi heritage, one site at a time," said Abdulamir Hamdani, an Iraqi archaeologist from Stony Brook University.

"Hatra of course will be next," he said, referring to a beautifully-preserved city in Nineveh that is more than 2,000 years old and is a UNESCO world heritage site.

"I'm really devastated. But it was just a matter of time," he said.

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An image grab from a video reportedly released by Welayat Nineveh Media Office on February 26, 2015, …

The destruction at Nimrud came a week after the jihadist group released a video showing militants armed with sledgehammers and jackhammers smashing priceless ancient artefacts at the Mosul museum.

That attack sparked widespread consternation and alarm, with some archaeologists and heritage experts comparing it with the 2001 demolition of the Bamiyan Buddhas in Afghanistan by the Taliban.

- Museum rampage -

In the jihadists' extreme interpretation of Islam, statues, idols and shrines amount to recognising other objects of worship than God and must be destroyed.

The video released by IS last week showed militants knocking statues off their plinths and rampaging through the Mosul museum's collection.

"These artefacts behind me are idols for people from ancient times who worshipped them instead of God," a bearded militant said in the video.

"The prophet removed and buried the idols in Mecca with his blessed hands," he said, referring to the Muslim prophet Mohammed.

Many of the artefacts destroyed in the Mosul museum were from Nimrud and Hatra.

IS spearheaded a sweeping offensive last June that overran Nineveh province, where Mosul and Nimrud are located, and swept through much of Iraq's Sunni Arab heartland.

The Mosul region was home to a mosaic of minorities, including the Assyrian Christians, who consider themselves to be the region's indigenous people.

IS has systematically destroyed heritage sites, including Sunni Muslim shrines that it also considers heretical, in areas it controls, and repeatedly attacked members of religious minorities.

Iraqi security forces and allied fighters are battling to regain ground from the jihadists with backing from an international anti-IS coalition as well as neighbouring Iran.

But major operations to drive IS out of Nineveh are likely months away, leaving the province's irreplaceable historical sites at the mercy of militants who have no regard for Iraq's past.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas addresses the media at the Presidential Palace in Ankara January 12, 2015.

CREDIT: REUTERS/UMIT BEKTAS

By Ali Sawafta

RAMALLAH, West Bank (Reuters) - Palestinian leaders in the West Bank said on Thursday they would halt the security coordination with Israel which is widely credited with keeping order in the territory and preventing attacks in Israel.

The Palestinian Central Council, whose votes are usually binding on the Western-backed Palestinian Authority, said it made the decision because Israel had breached bilateral agreements, including by withholding tax revenues it collects on behalf of the Palestinians.

A spokesman for President Mahmoud Abbas, who must make the official decision to sever security ties with Israel, was not available and it was unclear whether the PCC decision would go immediately into effect.

An Israeli security official, asked about the decision, told Reuters there had been no changes in security cooperation.

Israel said in January it was freezing $127 million of monthly Palestinian tax revenue in protest against Abbas' decision to apply for membership of the International Criminal Court and pursue war crime charges against Israel.

The tax money covers around two-thirds of the Palestinian budget and is used to pay tens of thousands of public sector employees.

A statement issued by the 110-member PCC read: "Security coordination in all its forms with the authority of the Israeli occupation will be stopped in the light of its (Israel's) non-compliance with the agreements signed between the two sides."

It said Israel "should shoulder all its responsibilities toward the Palestinian people in the occupied state of Palestine as an occupation authority according to international law.”

An end to agreement on security coordination, which dates from the Oslo peace accords of the mid-1990s, could have an immediate impact on stability in West Bank cities such as Hebron, Nablus and Jenin, where anti-Israel unrest is common.

Palestinian security forces also require Israeli permission to send patrols into some areas of the West Bank to preserve law and order.

Bassm Al-Salhe, a PCC member, told Reuters the council's decision would be put into effect.

"This is a decision that was taken and the PLO executive committee will follow up on the implementation," he said.

(Reporting by Ali Sawafta; Writing by Nidal al-Mughrabi; Editing by Andrew Roche)

A courtroom sketch shows accused Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev in court on the second day of his trial at the federal courthouse in Boston, Massachusetts March 5, 2015. REUTERS/Jane Flavell Collins

By Scott Malone

BOSTON (Reuters) - The father of a boy killed in the Boston Marathon bombing recalled in court on Thursday how he left his dying 8-year-old son behind with his injured wife so he could rush their two other children to the hospital.

"I saw a little boy who had his body severely damaged by an explosion and I just knew from what I saw that there was no chance," William Richard testified in the federal trial of Dzhokar Tsarnaev.

Richard was among the prosecution witnesses on the trial's second day who told jurors about the final moments of the three who died on April 15, 2013 near the race's finish line. His son, Martin, was the youngest.

A Boston policeman remembered administering CPR to 29-year-old Krystle Campbell. A second officer said she left the body of 23-year-old Lingzi Lu only when her captain ordered her to, fearing there could be another bomb.

Tsarnaev, 21, has admitted through his attorneys that he and his older brother planted the two bombs, which also injured 264 people. He is also charged with in fatal shooting of a police officer three days later.

But Tsarnaev has not changed his plea of not guilty, leaving it to jurors to convict him and, if they do, to determine whether to sentence him to death or life in prison without possibility of parole.

Richard recalled the chaotic moments after the blasts, when he loaded his oldest son, Henry, and his youngest child, Jane, then 5, into an ambulance, and realized that Martin was not going to survive.

After seeing how badly injured Martin was and realizing the boy would not survive, "I knew in my head that I needed to act quickly or we might not only lose Martin, but we might lose Jane too."

He left Martin with his wife, Denise, who had been blinded by the blast, and went back to the ambulance and accompanied his other children to the hospital. Jane lost a leg in the blast.

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Defense attorneys for accused Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, David Bruck (L) and Judy Cla …

Richard, a community activist and member of a longtime Boston family, and Henry were also injured, but not as seriously as Jane or his wife.

Tsarnaev faces a 30-count federal indictment on charges including two counts of use of a weapon of mass destruction resulting in death. He is also charged in the shooting of the police officer, who was slain as the defendant and his 26-year-old brother, Tamerlan, tried to flee Boston. The elder brother died later that night

The Tsarneav family moved to the United States from Russia's restive Chechnya region about a decade before the attack. Prosecutors contend their actions were motivated by militant Islamic views.

Death penalty trials play out in two phases, with the jury first establishing whether the defendant is guilty and, if the defendant is convicted, whether a death sentence is warranted.

Defense attorneys are trying to prove that Tamerlan Tsarnaev was the driving force behind the attack, with his younger brother playing a secondary role.

TRIAGE

In other testimony on Thursday, Boston policewoman Lauren Woods recalled helping fellow first responders carry Lu, a badly injured Chinese exchange student, to an ambulance.

"A paramedic ... told us to take her off because she was gone and he needed to keep the ambulance available for people that they could save," said Woods, who stayed with Lu's body until her captain ordered her to leave.

"He said, 'No, you're alive, you need to go. She's part of the crime scene.'" Woods testified.

A second officer, Frank Chiola, said he had been standing near the finish line when the first bomb went off and heard the second detonate as he was running to the scene.

"You couldn't tell who was alive, who was dead," said Chiola, who went on to perform CPR on Campbell before she died.

"It was chaos."

Another survivor testified that he remembered being bumped by a person who he realized in retrospect was Tamerlan Tsarnaev. Jeff Bauman said he noticed the man had left a backpack in the crowd.

"He just looked very suspicious. He didn't look like anybody that was there. He wasn't having fun, he wasn't watching the race," said Bauman, who lost both legs.

The next day, when he woke up in a hospital, Bauman said he immediately told a friend that he had spotted a suspect and worked with a police sketch artist.

"It was kind of a relief," Bauman said, "to know that I got to help out and do my part."

(Reporting by Scott Malone; Editing by Tom Brown and Jonathan Oatis)

Cooke Aquaculture sites in Annapolis Basin, Shelburne Harbour, Jordan Bay reporting mortalities

Cooke Aquaculture's sites in the Annapolis Basin, Shelburne Harbour and Jordan Bay are reporting mortalities, officials said.

A fish health veterinarian visited the Annapolis Basin and Shelburne Harbour sites and is expected to visit the Jordan Bay site in the next few days to investigate the cause of death, Fisheries and Aquaculture Minister Keith Colwell said in a statement.

"Our provincial fish health veterinarians investigate mortality events to rule out diseases of concern," he said.

The department said a preliminary investigation has found a superchill happened, meaning sustained cold temperatures dropped the temperature of the water to the level that fish blood freezes, which is around –0.7 C.

Tides in late February and early March also tend to be high, the department said, contributing to to lowering temperatures in sea cages by flooding more shallow areas than usual. Low air temperatures cool the water and receding tides flush the cages with superchilled water.

The Department of Fisheries and Aquaculture said superchills happen every five to seven years and the deaths do not pose a risk to the environment.