International
Truck driver ploughs through Peru's ancient Nazca lines
Truck driver ploughs through Peru's ancient Nazca lines
The Peruvian government has ordered increased security at the country's world famous Nazca lines after a truck driver ploughed his vehicle through the ancient archaeological site.
In future, the 450-square-kilometre area will be protected day and night with drones, the Culture Ministry said on Tuesday.
The 2,000-year-old Nazca lines are giant drawings of around 370 plants and animals, which can only be seen from the sky. They were declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1994.
The ministry said that the truck driver ignored warning signs when he drove onto the heritage site on Saturday, leaving deep tyre marks in a 50-by-100-metre area and damaging the lines.
The truck driver, who was arrested later that day, said he had wanted to change a tyre, according to the newspaper El Commercio.
In May last year, Austrian Greenpeace activist Wolfgang Sadik was handed a suspended jail sentence of two years and four months and a 200,000-dollar fine for marring the lines during a 2014 protest.
He was accused of laying out fabric letters to form a slogan between the lines, which was meant to draw attention to climate change, leaving tracks in the process that irreparably damaged them.