UNESCO: "Treasures Ransacked from Baghdad Museum Remain Untraced"

Evidence of how quickly and irretrievably a country can be stripped of its cultural heritage came with the Iraq war in 2003.

The latest figures suggest that half of the 40 iconic items from the Iraq National Museum in Baghdad still had not been retrieved. And of at least 15,000 items looted from its storerooms, about 8,000 have yet to be traced.

About 4,000 of the objects taken from the museum had been recovered in Iraq. Other artifacts have been retrieved from surrounding countries such as Syria, Kuwait, Iran and Turkey.

None of these objects has yet been sent back to Iraq. Other items had been destroyed or stolen from enormously important archaeological sites, such as those at Nimrud and Babylon.

The full extent of the damage has been impossible to gauge so far because of the deteriorating security situation. The director of the Iraq National Museum has been forced to seal his storerooms because it is currently too dangerous for his staff to start work on an inventory of the material that has been returned.

An international mission planned under the auspices of UNESCO with advice from experts at the British Museum, has been unable to start work for similar reasons.

The delays all make it more likely that material will continue to be lost from the country´s archaeological sites, some of which have been permanently damaged by war.