Looters return objects to museum

Iraq's antiquities chief, Jabar Hilil, yesterday called looting of Iraq's national museum following entry of US forces the "crime of the century."


And he questioned why US forces made no move to safeguard it in the days of chaos that followed the toppling of President Saddam Hussein's government.

But Hilil left open the possibility that losses were not as absolute as first thought.


With no electricity in Baghdad, he said, museum operators had yet to make a full assessment of the now-unlit underground vaults in which they had stashed many pieces for safekeeping as war came.


Even in the dark, he said, it was clear the storage rooms had been breached.

"We cannot say how many pieces were taken, but it is disastrous," Donny George, director general of research for the state board of antiquities, told reporters.

Museum officials declined to let journalists into the museum to see the damage directly.

Interpol and the FBI pledged to try to help recover the goods. Museum officials yesterday indicated that they had had no contact from the US investigators.

They urged governments around the world to block any sale of the looted goods -- citing Switzerland, the US, Israel and Japan as the markets where smuggled art was most likely to surface.