Iraqi forces on Thursday captured the compound of a landmark mosque in Mosul that was blown up last week by the ISIS group — a hugely symbolic site from where the top ISIS leader declared an Islamic “caliphate” nearly three years ago.
The advance comes as the Iraqi troops are pushing deeper into the Old City, a densely populated neighbourhood west of the Tigris River where the al-Nouri Mosque with its 12th century al-Hadba minaret once stood and where the ISIS militants are now making their last stand in what are expected to be the final days of the battle for Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city.
Iraqi special forces reached the al-Nuri Mosque compound and took control of the surrounding streets on Thursday afternoon, following a dawn push into the area, lt Gen Abdul Wahab al-Saadi of the elite force said.
Damaged and destroyed houses dot the route Iraqi forces have carved into the congested district — along a landscape of destruction where the stench of rotting bodies rises from under the rubble.
Thursday’s push comes more than a week after Iraqi forces launched the operation to retake Mosul’s last ISIS-held parts of the Old City neighbourhood, with its narrow alleyways and dense clusters of homes.
Taking the mosque is a symbolic victory — from its pulpit, ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in July 2014 declared a self-styled Islamic “caliphate,” encompassing territories then-held by the Islamic State group in Syria and Iraq.
Iraqi and coalition officials said ISIS blew up the mosque complex last week. The ISIS group has blamed a US airstrike for the destruction, a claim rejected by a spokesman for the US-led coalition. US Army Col Ryan Dillon said that coalition planes “did not conduct strikes in that area at that time.”
ISIS had initially tried to destroy the al-Nouri Mosque in July 2014, saying the structure contradicted their fundamentalist interpretation of Islam. Mosul residents converged on the area, however, and formed a human chain to protect it.
last week’s destruction was only the latest in a long series of priceless archaeological and cultural sites that the militants have ravaged across Iraq and Syria.
In addition to pillaging hundreds of treasures and artifacts, IS fighters have damaged or destroyed dozens of historic places, including the town of Palmyra in Syria, home to one of the Middle East’s most spectacular archaeological sites; the 2,000-year-old city of Hatra; and the nearly 3,000-year-old city of Nimrud in Iraq’s Euphrates River valley.
After months of fighting, the IS hold in Mosul has now shrunk to less than 2 square kilometers (0.8 square miles) of territory but the advances have come at considerable cost.
“There are hundreds of bodies under the rubble,” said special forces Maj. Dhia Thamir, deployed inside the Old City. He added that all the dead bodies along the special forces’ route were of IS fighters.
Special forces Maj. Gen. Sami al-Aridi acknowledged that some civilians have been killed by airstrikes and artillery in the fight for the Old City. “Of course there is collateral damage, it is always this way in war,” he said.
