After months of warnings, on 17 December 2019, the Prensa Latina news source detailed the looting of Ain Dara, reporting: "...these elements carried out illegal excavations in areas of the town of Afrin, in the north of Aleppo and looted properties and facilities in the village of Tal Mohammed and near that of Ras Al Ayn, in that of Hasaka. Various sources also indicated that in the village of Joga, near the aforementioned Afrin, terrorists of the Al Hamzat organization seized a Basalt Lion at the Archaeological site of Ain Dara"...There are many tell [archaeological mound] sites in the surrounding area, such as Tall Sulaymānī, which in Arabic means "Tell of Solomon". Furthermore, to the east also is Qamishli, the second largest city in the al-Hasakah Governorate, which was home to a significant Jewish community in ancient times. It was also the modern center of Syriac Christianity, formed after the 1915 Assyrian Genocide, which followed the Armenian and Greek genocides perpetrated against the Syrian Christians during WWI. An estimated 20,000 Christians left the city of Qamishli after the 2011 Syrian War erupted. Qamishli is situated at the base of the Taurus Mountains, located near the area of ancient Hurrian city of Urkesh, which was founded during the 3000 BC era. Excavations have been on hold during the Syrian War since 2011, but unlike Ain Dara, the Urkesh site is protected by Kurdish YPG troops since 2016. Additionally, in the town of Urkesh, the copper Louvre lion and accompanying stone tablet bearing the earliest known text in Hurrian was discovered, dating to the Akkadian period of 2300 – 2159 BC. A second, copper lion found there, is on permanent exhibit in the Metropolitan Museum of Art.