IRAQ RECLAIMS MOSUL FROM ISLAMIC STATE
IRAQ’S PRIME MINISTER showed up in the city of Mosul (pic) on Sunday to declare victory in the 9-month battle for control of the Islamic State’s former capital in Iraq, signaling the near-end of the most grueling campaign against the group
IT REMAINED unclear whether a last pocket of territory, thought to span no more than a few hundred square yards, had been cleared of IS rebels. There were sounds of gunfire from the area in Mosul’s Old City before he arrived
MOSUL WAS the largest city to fall to Islamic State control. It was from the city’s medieval mosque that the group’s leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, declared the birth of a caliphate spanning swaths of Syria and Iraq.
Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi declared victory in the 'liberated' city of Mosul on Sunday, his office said, in the biggest defeat yet for the Islamic State group.
Abadi "arrives in the liberated city of Mosul and congratulates the heroic fighters and the Iraqi people on the achievement of the major victory," his office said in a statement.
The announcement comes after a gruelling nearly nine- month battle to retake the northern city from the jihadists after three years under their rule.
A photo on Abadi's official Twitter account showed him dressed in a black military uniform and cap as he arrived in Mosul to announce the recapture of the city.
The fighting did not seem to be completely over yet, with gunfire still audible in Mosul and air strikes hitting the city around the time the premier's office released the statement.
The declared victory in Mosul marks an epic milestone for the Iraqi security forces, who had crumbled in the face of an IS onslaught across Iraq in 2014.
IS swept across much of Iraq's Sunni Arab heartland in a lightning offensive that year, proclaiming a self-styled "caliphate" straddling Iraq and neighbouring Syria.
But the jihadist group, which is facing twin offensives backed by a US-led coalition in both countries, has since lost large parts of the territory it once controlled.
The Iraqi forces launched their campaign to recapture Mosul in October, seizing its eastern side in January and launching the battle for its western part the next month.
But the fight grew tougher when Iraqi forces entered the densely populated Old City on the western bank of the Tigris River that divides the city.
In recent days, security forces have killed jihadists trying to escape their dwindling foothold in Mosul, as Iraqi units fought to retake the last two IS-held areas near the Tigris.
Earlier on Sunday Iraq's Joint Operations Command had said it killed 30 terrorists trying to escape across the river.