The Iraqi National Museum has found more than 600 missing artifacts in a storeroom of the prime minister's office, two years after the US government returned them to Iraq. The tourism and archaeology minister Qahtan Abbas Numan told a news conference at the National Museum in the capital Baghdad that US army handed them over to the prime minister's office, but the transfer was conducted without any representatives for antiquities and heritage in attendance. An inquiry triggered by Prime Minister al-Maliki's office recovered the artefacts. The items, some dating to the third millennium BC, had been stored in a warehouse alongside common kitchen utensils, after being repatriated by the US military. Most of the artefacts were among some 15,000 relics looted during the conflict that followed the 2003 US-led invasion that ousted former president Saddam Hussein. The chairman of Iraq's Board of Antiquities and Heritage Qais Hussein Rashid said these items, which provide an account of the civilisation of Mesopotamia, will finally regain their rightful place in the museum.