Vandals defaced an Israeli archaeological site by painting Palestinian flags and nationalistic slogans on the stones. PHOTO: Amiram Cohen.

Vandals defaced a UNESCO archaeological site in southern Israel by painting Palestinian flags and nationalistic slogans on the stones, Israeli news site NRG reported on Wednesday.

Inspectors from the Israel Antiquities Authority and the Israel Nature and Parks Authority filed a complaint on Wednesday with the Dimona police department over the vandalism at the ruins of the ancient city of Haluza, a UNESCO World Heritage Site located in the Negev desert.

“After the police give us the permission, we’ll start to clean up the site and restore it,” said Amiram Cohen, the NPA’s inspector for the western Negev region.

The incident was discovered earlier this week when images of the painted flags at Haluza were uploaded to the vandalizing group’s website, and were discovered by Cohen.

Cohen went to the site and discovered that six ancient stones had been defaced with crude Palestinian flags. The date, “15.5,” when Palestinians mark the founding of Israel as the ‘Nakba,’ or catastrophe, was also daubed on the rocks. Additionally “Kfar Halsa Lod” was written on the stones, in Hebrew.