Though it involves no loss of life, apparently, still the looting and destruction at Baghdad's Iraq Museum is a tragedy of huge proportions.

Civilizations like the Sumerians, Babylonians, and Assyrians thrived within the nation's borders. The biblical patriarch Abraham and Babylonian King Hammurabi lived in what is today Iraq, while Imam Ali, the founder of Shiite Islam, died there.
But Iraq's rich heritage, a source of enduring pride to humanity, has been under stress since the Gulf War of the early 1990s. A new outbreak of hostilities may put archaeological sites, historic architecture, and priceless artifacts in further jeopardy, archaeologists fear.

National Geographic March 21, 2003

The museum escaped the bombing, but it has been stripped almost bare. "Eighty per cent of what we had was stolen," Mr Reda said, standing in the glass-littered compound.

Display cases are empty, pottery shards litter the floor. In the vault for archeological fragments drawers that once held evidence of Sumerian, Assyrian and Babylonian culture have been pulled out and stripped.

The Guardian April 14, 2003

So many precious artifacts, gone forever - and probably not even to turn up on E-Bay.