Mosul mosque capture heralds end of Daesh ‘caliphate’ in Iraq
mosul/erbil (Iraq) — After eight months of grinding urban warfare, Iraqi government troops on Thursday captured the ruined mosque in Mosul from where Daesh proclaimed its self-styled caliphate three years ago, the Iraqi military said.
Iraqi authorities expect the long battle for Mosul to end in the coming days as the remaining Daesh fighters are now bottled up in just a handful of neighbourhoods of the Old City.
The seizure of the 850-year-old Grand Al Nuri Mosque is a huge symbolic victory for the Iraqi forces fighting to recapture Mosul, which had served as Daesh’s de facto capital in Iraq.
“Their fictitious state has fallen,” an Iraqi military spokesman, Brigadier-General Yahya Rasool, told state TV.
The insurgents blew up the medieval mosque and its famed leaning minaret a week ago as US-backed Iraqi forces started a push in its direction. Their black flag had been flying from Al Hadba (The Hunchback) minaret since June 2014.
Prime Minister Haider Al Abadi “issued instructions to bring the battle to its conclusion”, his office said. The fall of Mosul would in effect mark the end of the Iraqi half of the Daesh rule even though the hardline group would still control territory west and south of the city. Its capital in Syria, Raqqa, is also besieged by a US-backed Kurdishled coalition.
The cost of the battle has been enormous, however.
In addition to military casualties, thousands of civilians are estimated to have been killed.
About 900,000 people, nearly half the pre-war population of the northern city, have fled the battle, mostly taking refuge in camps or with relatives and friends, according to aid groups.
Those trapped in the city suffered hunger and deprivation as well as death or injury, and many buildings have been ruined.
Counter Terrorism Service (CTS) troops captured the Al Nuri Mosque’s ground in a “lightning operation” on Thursday, a commander of the US-trained elite units told state TV. Civilians living nearby were evacuated in the past days through corridors, he added.
daesh’s state of falsehood has come to an end. The return of al nuri Mosque and al Hadba minaret to the fold of the nation marks the end of the daesh state of falsehood Haider Al Abadi, Iraqi Prime Minister
CTS units are now in control of the mosque area and the Al Hadba and Sirjkhana neighbourhoods and they are still advancing, a military statement said.
Other government units, from the army and police, were closing in from other directions.
An elite Interior Ministry unit said it freed about 20 children believed to belong to Yazidi and other minorities persecuted by the insurgents in a quarter north of the Old City.
A US-led international coalition is providing air and ground support to the Iraqi forces fighting through the Old City’s maze of narrow alleyways.
But the advance remains an arduous task as the insurgents are dug in the middle of civilians, using mortar fire, snipers, booby traps and suicide bombers to defend their last redoubt.
The military estimated up to 350 militants were still in the Old City last week but many have been killed since.
They are besieged in one sq-km making up less than 40 per cent of the Old City and less than one per cent of the total area of Mosul, the largest urban centre over which they held sway in both Iraq and Syria.
Those residents who have escaped the Old City say many of the civilians trapped behind Daesh lines — put last week at 50,000 by the Iraqi military — are in a desperate situation with little food, water or medicines.
“Boys and girls who have managed to escape show signs of moderate malnutrition and carry psychosocial scars,” the United Nations Children’s Fund Unicef said in a statement.
Thousands of children remain at risk in Mosul, it said.
Baghdadi proclaimed himself “caliph” from the Grand Al Nuri Mosque’s pulpit on July 4, 2014, after the insurgents overran vast swathes of Iraq and Syria.
His speech from the mosque was the first time he revealed himself to the world and the footage broadcast then is to this day the only video recording of him as “caliph”.
He has left the fighting in Mosul to local commanders and is believed to be hiding in the border area between Iraq and Syria. —