03 Mar 2015
Looted Iraq museum responds to IS heritage attacks by reopening after 12-year closure
BY Tom Anstey
The Iraqi national museum – closed since 2003 following the Iraq War – has officially reopened earlier than scheduled in Baghdad in response to ISIS footage showing the terrorist group destroying priceless artefacts in Mosul.
The state-run museum, which reopened fully to the public after more than 12 years, chronicles 7,000 years of Mesopotamian civilisation. In August the museum reopened two renovated halls displaying around 500 artefacts from its collection. On the whole, however, the museum had remained closed to the public because of security concerns.
More than 15,000 objects of historical importance were looted from the museum over a three-day period at the height of the 2003 US-led invasion, leading to the museum’s closure. Upon reopening, around a third of those items had been recovered.
On 26 February, IS militants occupying Mosul released a video in which a group smashed ancient statues with sledgehammers in the city's museum.
"The events in Mosul led us to speed up our work,” said deputy tourism and antiquities minister, Qais Hussein Rashid, speaking to the AFP. “We wanted to open it today as a response to what the gangs did."
IS has a track record for destruction of Iraq’s cultural history, with ongoing reports of the group deliberately destroying heritage sites up to 1,800 years old as it continues to take parts of the country by force.
UNESCO has called for an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council to discuss how to protect Iraq's cultural heritage. The world heritage body previously suggested the formation of protected cultural zones – areas where there would be an enhanced focus on preventing attacks on cultural heritage and illicit trafficking in cultural properties.
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