Birthplace of Isis caliphate lies in ruins
IRAQ: The Grand Mosque of Mosul, where the leader of Islamic State declared his ‘‘caliphate’’ three years ago, has been destroyed, along with its leaning minaret, as Iraqi forces moved in to retake it.
Iraqi commanders accused Isis of deliberately blowing up the mosque, formally known as the alNuri Mosque and a symbol not only of the city but also of the country. In better times its crooked minaret, the al-Hadba, featured on souvenirs and postcards.
Isis issued a statement attributing the destruction to a United States air strike.
‘‘Blowing up the al-Hadba min- aret and the al-Nuri mosque amounts to an official acknowledgement of defeat,’’ Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said on his website.
The mosque had huge political significance for Isis, accounting for its use by al-Baghdadi for his announcement of a caliphate on June 29, 2014, two weeks after his forces swept through northern Iraq and seized Mosul.
It was named after Nur al-Din al-Zinki, the greatest Muslim commander in the time of the Crusades before Saladin. He succeeded in uniting Syria against the Christian foe.
Tradition has it that the build- ing of the mosque was ordered by Nur al-Din himself, shortly before his death. It was completed in 1172. The minaret started listing not long afterwards, and by the 14th century had already acquired its nickname al-Hadba, the hunchback.
If it has been deliberately destroyed, it would be one more in a long list of historic monuments to which Isis has taken bulldozers and explosives. On the opposite, east bank of the Tigris River in Mosul, the militants blew up the shrine of the Prophet Jonah, which was also a mosque. They attacked historical and biblical sites such as Nineveh, Nimrud and Hatra with jackhammers.
- The Times, Reuters
Wait for welfare proposed
United States President Donald Trump says he will propose legislation that would ban immigrants from receiving welfare benefits for five years. ’’I believe the time has come for new immigration rules,’’ he said at a campaign rally in Cedar Rapids, Iowa yesterday. Trump campaigned on promises of a crackdown on undocumented immigrants, and signed an executive order shortly after taking office in January that has led to increases in deportations across the country. The new legislation would presumably go further than a 1996 welfare overhaul which banned many legal immigrants from receiving most federal welfare benefits for five years or longer.
Minister’s plane buzzed
A Nato fighter jet buzzed the plane of Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu before being chased off by a Russian jet, in the latest aerial confrontation between the West and Russia and its allies. The Russian plane was flying over neutral waters of the Baltic Sea en route to the western Russian city of Kaliningrad when a Nato F-16 ‘‘attempted to make an approach’’, Russian media agency RIA Novosti reported, citing its journalist on Shoigu’s plane. An escorting Russian Su-27 fighter ‘‘displayed its weapons’’ and the F-16 flew off.
Mafia ‘profited from deaths’
Sicilian magistrates are investigating allegations that the mafia hastened the deaths of terminally ill people by injecting air into their veins to profit from funeral parlours that pay a commission of €300 (NZ$470) for each corpse. Catania prosecutors are examining the claims, first made last month by a satirical television programme, which interviewed two witnesses who claimed to have firsthand knowledge of the trade, said to have started in 2012. The witnesses said elderly patients in the town of Biancavilla who were discharged from hospital to die at home were killed by ambulance workers. Paramedics would recommend an undertaker and receive a finder’s fee for every cadaver, while the Cosa Nostra dictated the hiring decisions of the ambulance service, and profits were diverted to them.