LOOTERS have ransacked the most important museum in Iraq, stealing and smashing antiquities that date back to the dawn of civilisation.

In the outbreak of lawlessness that has seized Baghdad, thieves have carted off treasures dating back 7,000 years on handcarts and in wheelbarrows.

Visitors to the Iraqi National Museum yesterday found themselves trampling over shards of broken pottery and glass from smashed display cabinets.

Staff blamed American forces for not protecting the museum. Nabhal Amin, the deputy director, wept as she claimed the thieves had looted or destroyed 170,000 items “worth billions of dollars”. Other sources suggested 10,000 items had been on display.

Some of the looting was well organised. At least a dozen thieves went through the ground-floor rooms undisturbed. They broke into rooms that are built like bank vaults with large steel doors.

They were looking for treasures such as ivory and a silver harp dating back to 2,000BC found in the city of Ur, birthplace of Abraham, the Old Testament patriarch.

Some of the items were discovered by Sir Max Mallowan, the mid-20th-century British archeologist who was married to Agatha Christie, the crime writer.

Two men were seen hauling an ancient doorway out of the building and empty wooden crates were scattered over the floor. Statues and pottery were smashed or overturned. Yesterday the museum grounds were littered with broken doors, office paperwork and books. The curators claimed US officers had ignored requests to put guards outside the museum.

Amin said: “The Americans were supposed to protect the museum. If they had just one tank and two soldiers nothing like this would have happened. I hold them responsible.”

Muhsen Kadhim, a museum guard for 30 years, said: “We know people are hungry but what are they going to do with these antiquities?” Kadhim, who said he had been overwhelmed by the looters, added: “As soon as I saw the American troops near the museum I asked them to protect it but the second day looters came and robbed or destroyed all the antiquities.”

The museum has told four of its guards to carry guns to protect what antiquities remain in the museum’s upstairs rooms.

The museum houses items from Babylon and Nineveh, Sumerian statues, Assyrian reliefs and 5,000-year-old tablets bearing some of the earliest known writing. There are also gold and silver helmets and cups from the cemetery in Ur.

The museum was reopened six months ago after closing at the beginning of the 1991 Gulf war. It survived airstrikes on Baghdad then and was almost unscathed by the latest attacks on the city.

Times Recommends

• Should Knox’s trial even have reached the courtroom?
• 'Was it real?' The US bailout nightmare
• Iranian opposition plays the long game