THE ‘END’ OF ISIL’S CALIPHATE?
IRAQ’S PM DECLARES THE END OF ISLAMIC STATE, AMID HEAVY FIGHTING AND WIDESPREAD RUIN
Iraq’s prime minister declared an end to the ISIL caliphate Thursday after Iraqi forces captured the compound of a landmark mosque in Mosul that was blown up last week by the Islamic State group. “We are seeing the end of the fake Daesh state. The liberation of Mosul proves that,” Haider alAbadi said, using the Arabic acronym for ISIL in a statement posted to twitter. “We will not relent, our brave forces will bring victory,” he added.
But even as the Iraqi leader issued his statement, heavy clashes continued to unfold in Mosul — filling field hospitals and forcing hundreds to flee.
The destroyed al-Nuri mosque retaken by Iraqi special forces Thursday following a dawn push is a hugely symbolic win. The 12th-century landmark is where ISIL leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi made his only public appearance in July 2014, declaring a self-styled Islamic “caliphate,” encompassing territories then-held by ISIL in Syria and Iraq.
Iraqi and coalition officials said ISIL blew up the mosque complex last week. The Islamic State group has blamed a U.S. airstrike for the destruction, a claim rejected by a spokesman for the U.S.led coalition who said coalition planes “did not conduct strikes in that area at that time.”
The advances Thursday come as Iraqi troops are pushing deeper into the Old City, a densely populated neighbourhood west of the Tigris River where ISIL fighters are making their last stand in Iraq’s second-largest city. Clashes were ongoing into the evening Thursday, according to Associated Press reporters on the scene.
Last week Iraqi forces launched the operation to retake the Old City’s narrow alleyways and dense clusters of homes, embarking on some of the most difficult urban combat in the ISIL fight to date. ISIL now holds less than two square kilometres of territory inside Mosul, but the advances have come at considerable cost.
Damaged and destroyed houses dot the route Iraqi forces have carved into the congested district and the stench of rotting bodies rises from beneath mounds of rubble.
“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 ISIL 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.
“The houses are very old,” he said, referring to the Old City, “so any bombardment causes them to collapse completely.”
U.S.-led coalition spokesman Col. Ryan Dillon told reporters at the Pentagon that victory in Mosul was “imminent” and would likely occur “in days rather than weeks.”
But, he continued, “the Old City still remains a difficult, dense, suffocating fight — tight alleyways with booby traps, civilians, and (ISIL) fighters around every corner.”
Some 300 ISIL fighters remain holed up inside the Old City, according to Iraq’s special forces, along with an estimated 50,000 civilians, according to the United Nations.
Nearly a thousand civilians fled Mosul’s Old City Thursday, according to Col. Ali al-Kenani, an Iraqi intelligence officer at a west Mosul screening centre.
“We saw so many bodies stuck under the rubble as we fled,” said Muhammed Hamoud, who escaped the Old City with his wife and two children Thursday afternoon. “One man was still alive. He yelled for us to help him. We were able to dig him out, but he was so badly injured we had to leave him inside. We couldn’t carry him to flee with us.”