"It's most unfortunate that some Iraqis found it efficacious to take away some of these key antiquities from museums in downtown Baghdad when there was a void in security," said Brigadier General Vincent Brooks

"We have work under way with the Iraqi population to try to get these things back," he told reporters at US Central Command's war base in Qatar, without giving details.

A former advisor to Iraq's culture minister Tuesday accused US forces of having done nothing to prevent looters ransacking the national museum.

Among the artefacts stolen from Iraq's largest archeological museum was the famous 4,000-year-old Sumerian silver "harp from Ur, the Sumerian vase from Uruk and the Akkadian bronze statue of Basitki," said Muayyed Said al-Damergi.

"The US tanks were standing in front of the main gate of the Iraq National Museum when the looters broke in from a gate a few yards away. They did not do anything," he said

The museum suffered massive looting after US troops entered Baghdad last Wednesday.

US Secretary of State Colin Powell said Monday Washington was working with the United Nations, the European Union and Interpol to prevent stolen artefacts from leaving Iraq and warned thieves that they would face prosecution.

SPACE.WIRE