Jubilant Iraqis celebrate defeat of ISIL in Mosul
IRBIL, Iraq — Dressed in the black cap and fatigues of the Iraqi counter-terrorism forces, a jubilant Prime Minister Haider Al-Abadi arrived in Mosul Sunday to declare victory over ISIL in the city, even as fighting continued to rout the last jihadist diehards from the Old City.
On day 266 of fighting to recapture the city, Abadi shared a photo of himself shaking the hand of an Iraqi officer on the runway of a nearby airbase. Earlier, counter-terrorism forces were pictured planting the Iraqi flag on the western bank of the Tigris River after advancing through the Old City, where ISIL diehards have made their last stand.
It marked the end of the fight that lasted nearly nine months — longer than the Battle for Stalingrad — and put an end to the terror group’s three-year rule over Iraq’s second-largest city. ISIL stormed into Mosul in June 2014. Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the group’s leader, proclaimed a caliphate in the city shortly afterwards.
While the group still controls the district of Hawija north of Baghdad and remote areas of Anbar province and desert close to the Syrian border, the loss of its Iraqi capital deals a death blow to the group’s claims to a caliphate. Fighting continued around a 50-metre by 200-metre wedge of territory, where an unknown number of ISIL militants continued to hold civilians as human shields.
The country has begun celebrating what is being hailed by Abadi as “the end of the fake Daesh state,” using the Arabic name for ISIL.
In Baghdad, carloads of cheering men waving Iraqi flags drove through the capital celebrating. In Mosul, elated federal policemen filmed each other singing and dancing to patriotic music, weapons and smartphones held aloft.
But with much of west Mosul devastated, many Mosul residents would have little to celebrate. Exhausted families continued emerging from the ruins yesterday, many mourning relatives recently killed in the fighting. In much of the destroyed Old City, the stench of rot emanates from the rubble, coming from entombed bodies.
The battle to retake Mosul began last October, with coordinated attacks by Kurdish Peshmerga from the east and Iraqi army units pushing up from the south. Iraqi Special Operations Forces (ISOF) were the first soldiers to enter the city, and were responsible for retaking most districts of east Mosul, which was declared fully liberated in January.
The fighting reached its brutal apogee in the Old City, where a few hundred ISIL diehards made their last stand, effectively holding an estimated 100,000 starving civilians hostage.
Nearly a million people were displaced by the fighting. A UN survey of the damage found 15 of west Mosul’s residential neighbourhoods have been destroyed.