Cambodia has welcomed home a 1,000-year-old stone statue of a Hindu god that was looted from a temple during the country's civil war and spent the past three decades at an American museum.

The sculpture of Hanuman, a Hindu monkey god, was formally handed over Tuesday at a ceremony in Phnom Penh attended by government officials and the director of the Cleveland Museum of Arts, which acquired it in 1982.

Cambodia's Deputy Prime Minister Sok An praised the museum's initiative in returning the statue and called on "the world to follow the example of returning plundered treasures."

The Hanuman is the sixth ancient "blood antiquity" returned to Cambodia in recent years. Others have come from The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Sotheby's and Christie's auction houses and the Norton Simon Museum. (*)