[CPProt.net] Iraq: Local museum retrieves lost items

[MSN CPPnet (Ton Cremers)]

Local museum retrieves lost items
By Ali Allaq

Azzaman, December 7, 2005

The local museum in the southern city of Kut has retrieved 287 lost
artifacts, the head of a newly formed culture and environment group said.
Abdulridha Dawood said his not-for-profit group, dedicated to preserve the
country's heritage and environment, collected the items in talks with
families in the city and handed them to the curators.
"We have launched a campaign to retrieve all the relics that went missing
from the museum" in the aftermath of the U.S.-led invasion of the country,
he said.

The Iraq Museum in Baghdad was target of massive looting in the war
aftermath. Seventeen local museums in the provinces were also pillaged.
More than 10,000 items disappeared only from the central museum in Baghdad
while some provincial museums were set on fire.
It is the first time a non-governmental organization like Dawood's works for
the preservation of Iraqi heritage and environment.
"We want to launch a nation-wide campaign to protect our antiquities,"
Dawood said.

He said he intended to form similar groups in the other provinces to inform
Iraqis about the significance of their Mesopotamian cultural heritage.

The group worked on its own without police involvement.

Dawood said most of the retrieved relics, representing "important epochs in
Iraqi history were collected from families living nearby the museum."

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