Beirut, Feb 6 (AP) Lebanon's Ministry of Culture handed over to Iraq on Sunday 337 ancient artifacts that had been on display in a Lebanese museum for years.

The items, which included clay tablets, were returned by Minister of Culture Mohammed Murtada to Iraq's ambassador to Lebanon during a ceremony held at the National Museum of Beirut.

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Murtada told Iraq's state-run news agency in a Saturday report that a Lebanese committee had been investigating the items since 2018.

The artifacts had been stored most recently at the private Nabu Museum in northern Lebanon. The report gave no further details about the artifacts' provenance.

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“We are celebrating the handing over of 337 artifacts that are of different eras of civilizations in Mesopotamia,” Iraq's ambassador to Lebanon Haider Shyaa Al-Barrak said at the ceremony. This will not be the last handover, he added, without elaborating.

Many of Iraq's antiquities were looted during the country's decades of war and instability, mostly since the 2003 US-led invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein.

Iraq's government has been slowly recovering the plundered antiquities since then. Archaeological sites across the country however continue to be neglected due to lack of funds.

At least half dozen shipments of antiquities and documents have been returned to Iraq's museum since 2016, according to Iraqi authorities. (AP)

(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)