US will return more than 10,000 artefacts stolen from Iraqi national museum after the US-led invasion in 2003, reports AFP. Iraq's senior ministry advisor Baha al-Mayahi told to AFP that Baghdad achieved an initial deal with US on returning stolen artefacts by August 2014.

"There are still details that need to be worked out, and the artefacts must all be registered in an electronic archive at Cornell University in the state of New York before they are returned", Mayahi said.

He also confirmed that Baghdad and Washington agreed not to investigate the details about how the stolen Iraqi antiques arrived in the United States.

During the 10-year US-led war in Iraq, cultural heritage of the country was severely damaged. About 15,000 artefacts were taken from National museum in Baghdad and about 4,000 have been returned so far. Iraqi archeologists succeed to recover about 130,000 antiques stolen from other museums in Iraq, but they warn that there are still tens of thousends of objects missing.

A few months ago, Iraqi archaeologist and architect Ihsan Fathi gave an interview to Russian English-language news channel RT and he told that some archeological sites in Iraq were also seriously demaged by military troups during construction work for military infrastructure.

"Our civilization originated on the territories where Iraq is now. We have historic landmarks that are over 10,000 years old. And everybody thinks that Iraq is responsible for preserving this cultural heritage. But unfortunately, Iraq is the world leader in having destruction visited on its historic sites. This destruction started during the Mongol invasion in 1258 and continued all the way to the 20th century, when the Iraqi state was formed. We’ve suffered great losses. During the 1991 occupation, the Americans reached the suburbs of Hillah. Many of the museums in the city were looted, and the US forces just let that happened. But even more damage was done in 2003, when Iraq was occupied", said Fathi to RT.

Soran Ali