Fifteen years after looting, thousands of artefacts are still missing from Iraq’s national museum

On April 10 2003, the first looters broke into the National Museum of Iraq.

Staff had vacated two days earlier, ahead of the advance of US forces on Baghdad.

• Craig Barker
• The Conversation

The museum was effectively ransacked for the next 36 hours until employees returned.

While the staff – showing enormous bravery and foresight – had removed and safely stored 8,366 artefacts before the looting, some 15,000 objects were taken during that 36 hours.

While 7,000 items have been recovered, more than 8,000 remain unaccounted for, including artefacts thousands of years old from some of the earliest sites in the Middle…

• Fifteen years after…