Anger as Daesh destroys historic mosque
IRBIL: The “liberation” of the city of Mosul from Daesh will be announced in a few days, Iraqi Prime Minister Haider Al-Abadi said on Thursday, according to Baghdad-based Al-Sumaria TV.
“It’s a matter of a few days and we will announce the total liberation of Mosul,” Al-Abadi told reporters in Baghdad, according to Al-Sumaria.
The leaning Al-Hadba minaret that towered over Mosul for 850 years lay in ruins on Thursday, demolished by retreating Daesh militants, but Al-Abadi said the act marked their final defeat in the city.
“In the early morning, I climbed up to the roof of my house and was stunned to see Al-Hadba had gone,” Nashwan, a day-laborer who lives near the mosque, said by phone. “I felt I had lost a son of mine.”
His words echoed the shock and anger of many over the destruction of the Grand Al-Nuri Mosque along with its famous minaret, known affectionately as “the hunchback” by Iraqis.
The demolition came on Wednesday night as Iraqi forces closed in on the mosque, which carried enormous symbolic importance for Daesh.
It was there that its leader Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi declared a “caliphate” as militants seized swathes of Syria and Iraq. He proclaimed himself the caliph, ruler of all Muslims, from the mosque’s pulpit.
His black flag had been flying on the 150-foot minaret since June 2014, after Daesh fighters surged across Iraq.
Russia said on Thursday there was a high degree of certainty Al-Baghdadi was dead, according to RIA news agency. Moscow said last week its forces might have killed him, but Western and Iraqi officials are skeptical.
The destruction of the minaret “deepens the wounds” in war-torn Iraq, UNESCO chief Irina Bokova said Thursday.
Calling in a statement for “immediate and strengthened international mobilization,” the head of the UN’s cultural agency said: “This new destruction deepens the wounds of a society already affected by an unprecedented humanitarian tragedy.”
She pledged UNESCO’s “renewed solidarity and readiness to support, restore and rehabilitate cultural heritage whenever possible.”
Work began by UNESCO to safeguard the minaret in 2012 “had to be interrupted due to the conflict,” Bokova said, adding however that “a comprehensive study for the conservation of the minaret has been completed and could be useful in the future.”
In March, the UN Security Council approved a resolution calling for a systematic defense of cultural heritage sites in conflict zones.
Some analysts said the destruction of the mosque could, in fact, speed the advance of government forces, which had been slowed by fear of damaging it.
Defense analysts said the decision to destroy the mosque could indicate the militants were on the verge of collapse.
“They had said they would fight until their last breath defending the mosque,” Baghdad-based security expert Safaa Al-A’sam told Reuters. “The fact is that they are no longer capable of standing in the face of Iraqi government forces.”