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'Looted' treasures found in Baghdad By Andrew Clennell 08 June 2003 Almost all the items feared looted from the Iraqi National Museum in April have been found safe in a secret vault, the US announced yesterday. In a separate find, the world-famous treasures of Nimrud, one of the most important archaeological discoveries of the 20th century, which have not been on public display since before the first Gulf War, have also been located. They were found in good condition in a different vault, at Iraq's central bank. US occupation authorities said fewer than 50 major exhibition items from the National...

American officials in Iraq have announced that nearly all the Baghdad Museum's priceless antiquities are intact, despite initial fears that they had been lost to looters during the war. US investigators working at the museum slashed the number of antiquities listed as missing from about 170,000 to 3,000 after a secret storage vault was uncovered this week. In another development, the investigators said they had recovered a priceless Assyrian jewellery collection - the Nimrud artefacts - which had been deposited at the Iraqi Central Bank in the early 1990s. The discoveries meant the investigators' work in Iraq was nearly...

<p>The treasure of Nimrud survived 2,800 years buried near a dusty town in northern Iraq. It then spent 12 years tucked away in a vault. Until Thursday, it was uncertain whether it had survived Saddam Hussein's son, a U.S. missile strike, looters, a flood and a grenade attack. But it has been found intact in the dark, damp basement of a bombed out central bank building.</p>

U.S. investigators have recovered 951 items looted from Iraq's National Museum, but have not gained access to central bank vaults thought to contain priceless objects or a secret storage site known only to museum staff, the lead investigator said on Friday. Marine Col. Matthew Bogdanos, leader of the team investigating the museum's losses, was unable to give a firm figure of the number of items still missing from the museum's collection following the looting spree in the days after U.S. forces entered Baghdad. In a briefing from Baghdad to reporters at the Pentagon, he said his team of 14 investigators...

WASHINGTON - More than 700 artefacts and tens of thousands of ancient manuscripts that had been missing from the National Museum in Baghdad have been recovered by teams of investigators in Iraq, US officials said on Wednesday. Some of the missing works were stored in underground vaults before the United States-led invasion of the country. The US investigators located the vaults over the past week. They forced them open, revealing hundreds of artefacts that had apparently been stored there to protect them from being damaged in a US assault. The find included ancient jewellery, pottery and sarcophaguses, officials said. The...

Marines Guard $1B in Iraqi Gold By ELLEN KNICKMEYER .c The Associated Press BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - U.S. Marines with machine guns and tanks stood watch Friday over what they estimated was $1 billion in gold - safeguarding bank vaults that withstood direct rocket-propelled grenade hits by robbers determined to fight their way in. ``Fort Knox doesn't have security like this,'' Staff Sgt. Jack Coughlin of the 3rd Battalion, 4th Marines said in a bank lobby, as shots rang out outside - U.S. snipers dealing with robbers armed with AK-47s still roaming Baghdad's pillaged banking district. Days of audacious daylight...

<p>BAGHDAD, Iraq -- Last week's looting of the Iraq National Museum, which saw numerous items disappear from a vast collection spanning eight millennia of Mesopotamian history, has provoked world-wide outcry -- and criticism of the U.S. military for its failure to protect Iraq's priceless cultural heritage.</p>

Guess they didnt read the WSJ article today that the looting was an inside job US Culture Advisers Resign Over Iraq Museum Looting By Niala Boodhoo WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Two cultural advisers to the Bush administration have resigned in protest over the failure of U.S. forces to prevent the wholesale looting of priceless treasures from Baghdad's antiquities museum. Martin Sullivan, who chaired the President's Advisory Committee on Cultural Property for eight years, and panel member Gary Vikan said they resigned because the U.S. military had had advance warning of the danger to Iraq (news - web sites)'s historical treasures. "We...