Militants blast ancient mosque

850-year-old minaret blown up as Iraqi forces move in

‘WHEN I looked out of the window and saw the minaret was no longer there, I felt a part of me had died.” For Ahmed Saied, a 54-year-old Iraqi schoolteacher, and many others, Mosul can never be the same after Islamic State militants blew up the leaning minaret that had graced this city for nearly 850 years.

Militants destroyed the Grand al-Nuri Mosque on Wednesday evening along with its famous minaret, affectionately called al-Hadba, or “the hunchback” by Iraqis.

In the dawn light, all that remained was the base projecting from shattered masonry.

The destruction came as Iraqi forces closed in on the mosque, which also carried enormous symbolic importance for IS whose leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi used it in 2014 to declare a “caliphate” spanning swathes of of Syria and Iraq.

His black flag had been flying on the 45m minaret since June 2014, after IS fighters surged across Iraq, seizing territory.

The insurgents chose to blow it up rather than see the flag taken down by US-backed Iraqi forces battling through the maze of narrow alleys and streets of the Old City, the last district under IS’s control in Mosul.

“I climbed up to my house roof and was stunned to see the Hadba minaret had gone,” said Nashwan, a day-labourer living in Khazraj near the mosque.

“I broke into tears. I felt I had lost a son of mine.”

The minaret was built with seven bands of decorative brickwork in complex geometric patterns also found in Persia and Central Asia. Its tilt and the lack of maintenance made it vulnerable to blasts.

“The Iraqi security forces are continuing to push into remaining IS-held territory,” said US Army Colonel Ryan Dillon, the spokesperson for the US-led international coalition assisting in the Iraqi effort to defeat IS.

“There are 2km left in west Mosul before the entire city is liberated,” he said.

For many, the destruction of the minaret marked the final collapse of IS rule in Mosul and augured its demise across Iraq.

“Blowing up the al-Hadba minaret and the al-Nuri mosque amounts to an official acknowledgement of defeat,” Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said yesterday.

The mosque was destroyed as Iraq’s elite counter-terrorism service fought their way to within 50m of it, according to Iraqi military.

PICTURE: AP DESTROYED: In this July 2014 file photo, the gate of the Great Mosque or al-Nuri Mosque is seen in Mosul. Iraq’s ministry of defence says Islamic State militants blew up the mosque and the adjacent iconic leaning minaret.