Postwar chaos in Iraq has helped to boost real estate sales in neighboring Jordan, an official said Tuesday.

An increased in property sales for the month of June can be attributed to purchases by non-Jordanians, with people from Iraq topping the list, said Abdul-Munem Samara, director general of the Department of Lands and Survey, said Tuesday.

In all, the department recorded 70 land investments by Iraqis, mostly apartments in urban areas in north, central and southern Jordan, in the first six months of the year, compared with 52 during the same period a year earlier.

Most of the buying was in June, soon after a US-led invasion toppled Saddam Hussein. The invasion was followed by spiraling street crime, attacks on occupying forces and water and electricity shortages.

In the past, people in Iraq have sought to invest in neighboring Jordan during hard times in their homeland, Samara said.

Besides real estate, Iraqis have been snapping up vehicles and gold, driving up prices, officials and businessmen said.

Arab newspaper reports on Iraqi purchases in Jordan have raised speculation that members of the toppled Saddam regime, flush with ill-gotten cash, were on a spending spree. But a Jordanian government official said the buyers were private businessmen with few links to Saddam.

Jordan is Iraq's western neighbor and was its closest Arab business associate until the US-led war on March 21.

The kingdom is also home to about 300,000 Iraqis who came to escape Saddam's excesses or in search of work after their homeland's economy was crippled by years of war and sanctions.

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