Two people have been detained after digging a “large gap” through China’s Great Wall, authorities say.
A 38-year-old man and a 55-year-old woman “severely destroyed” a section of the wall with an excavator, according to a statement from the Youyu County Police Department.
The pair had apparently been working near the wall in the province of Shanxi, southwest of Beijing.
To “save time,” they apparently used their excavator to widen an “existing cavity” in the wall so their equipment could pass through, police said.
This “caused irreversible damage to the integrity and safety of the cultural relic,” the authorities added.
The Great Wall of China is not a single wall, but a collection of walls and ditches spanning more than 13,000 miles across northern China, according to Britannica.
The excavator incident occurred on a part of the wall known as the 32nd Great Wall, which is named after the 32nd beacon tower of the Ming Great Wall.
The Ming Great Wall is the longest and best-preserved section of the wall, spanning more than 5,000 miles.
After receiving reports of the damage on Aug. 24, police tracked down a man, a woman and an excavator in a neighboring county.
After questioning, police said they determined that the wall "was destroyed by these two people," and brought the pair to a police station for further investigation.
In an online statement last updated Aug. 31, police said the suspects were being detained, and that the case remained under investigation.
The Great Wall of China was built over the course of thousands of years between the 3rd century BC and the 17th century AD, according to UNESCO. The wall was designated a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1987.