Taliban blasted Buddha 'to be rebuilt' online

A plan to rebuild one of Afghanistan's two ancient Buddha statues which were destroyed by the Taliban will go online.

The World Heritage Group is campaigning to raise enough money to see the biggest of them resculpted.

Artists say they will feed measurements taken in the 1970s into a computer which will accurately reproduce a 3D plan of the figure and place the design on the internet.

The New 7 Wonders Foundation is working on the project with the Swiss-based Afghanistan Institute and Museum and a consortium has been set up.

Once the 3D plan is online, sculptors will build a scale model to study the techniques needed to complete the task and then build the 175 feet statue in Afghanistan.

The two statues were carved into the side of a cliff during the third and fifth centuries and were destroyed in March because the Taliban disapprove of idol worship.