Stolen Iraqi books found in Israel

Some 300 rare and valuable Iraqi books which were stolen after the US-led invasion of the country have been secretly moved into Israel.

According to Israeli Ha'aretz daily, the Jewish manuscripts included a1487 commentary on the biblical Book of Job and another volume of biblical prophets printed in Venice in 1617.

The books were part of massive collection which was kept in the headquarters of Saddam Hussein's secret police, Mukhabahrat in Baghdad. Many of the volumes were damaged during the bombardment of the Iraqi capital by the US-led forces in March 2003.

A large number of the volumes of the collection were stolen after the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), a division of the US Department of Defense which administered Iraq at that time, decided to send the books to the Library of Congress in Washington to be repaired.

"We bought them from thieves," Mordechai Ben-Porat, an Iraqi-born Jew and the founder of al-Quds' Babylonian Jewry Heritage centre told the newspaper.

Porat, who is also a Knesset (Parliament) member, added that his foundation spent some 25,000 dollars (16,000 euros) to transfer the books to Israel.

Iraq once hosted a 2,600 year-old Jewish community that numbered some 130,000 people in 1948.