Iraq recovered 17,000 artifacts from US: Nadim

Iraq’s Minister of Culture, Tourism and Antiquities Hassan Nadim said in a statement that Iraq had managed to recover nearly 17,000 artifacts stolen from the US, marking the return of the largest amount of smuggled Iraqi antiquities. is a symbol. Nadim praised the return of these artifacts as a significant event, and hoped for further efforts to recover other Iraqi antiquities smuggled into Europe.
According to official figures, some 15,000 cultural relics from the Stone Age, Babylonian, Assyrian and Islamic periods were stolen or destroyed by robbers after the regime of Saddam Hussein was toppled by US-led troops in 2003.

The Mosul Museum and the ancient cities of Hatra and Nimrud were also destroyed and a large number of antiquities smuggled in after the Islamic State terror group took control of large areas in northern and western Iraq in 2014.
There are over 10,000 sites officially recognized as archaeological sites in Iraq, but most of them are not protected and many are still being looted.