BAGHDAD, July 18 (Xinhua) -- The Iraqi Foreign Ministry said on Tuesday that Iraq received a gypsum-made mural dating back to the Assyrian period in the seventh century BC.

The mural, which stands on a metal base and is engraved with a horse and a cart carrying three people surrounded by palm trees, was handed over from the Swiss authorities to Iraqi Charge d'Affaires to Switzerland Muhammad Jawad Mahdi in the Swiss capital of Bern, said a statement by the ministry.

According to official statistics, about 15,000 pieces of cultural relics from the Stone Age, the Babylonian, Assyrian, and Islamic periods were stolen or destroyed by looters after Saddam Hussein's regime was toppled by U.S.-led troops in 2003.

The Mosul Museum and the ancient cities of Hatra and Nimrud in Iraq were destroyed and large numbers of antiquities were smuggled after the Islamic State militants took control of large territories in northern and western Iraq in 2014.

Many of the over 10,000 officially recognized archaeological sites in Iraq are not safeguarded and many are still being looted. Enditem

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