Free Republic

After eight months of grinding urban warfare, Iraqi government troops on Thursday captured the ruined mosque at the heart of Islamic State's de facto capital Mosul, and the prime minister declared the group's self-styled caliphate at an end. Iraqi authorities expect the long battle for Mosul to end in coming days as remaining Islamic State fighters are bottled up in just a handful of neighborhoods of the Old City. The seizure of the nearly 850-year-old Grand al-Nuri Mosque -- from where Islamic State proclaimed the caliphate nearly three years ago to the day -- is a huge symbolic victory. "The...

You’ve probably seen the video of ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi announcing the creation of his caliphate in 2014. He made that announcement in an 850-year-old mosque known as the Grand al-Nuri Mosque in Mosul. Thursday, Iraqi troops recaptured the mosque, or what is left of it, and the Prime Minister declared the caliphate was over. From Reuters: “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,” Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said in a statement, referring to the hardline Sunni Mulsim group by an Arabic...

Kawa Omar and Ahmed Rasheed | MOSUL/BAGHDAD, IRAQ The leaning al-Hadba minaret that towered over Mosul for 850 years lay in ruins on Thursday, demolished by retreating Islamic State militants, but Iraq's prime minister 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 the Hadba minaret 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...

ISIS has blown up the iconic mosque where it announced its own so called caliphate in 2014, an Iraqi officer has said. The terror's group's leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi made his only public appearance on the balcony of the al-Nuri mosque in Mosul that year. Iraq's Joint Operation Command today released a satellite image showing the mosque lying in rubble.

Iraq's prime minister, Haider al-Abadi, called the destruction of the mosque an "official declaration of defeat" by IS. ...The explosions happened as Iraq's elite Counter Terrorism Service units, which have been battling their way through Mosul's Old City, got within 50 metres of the mosque, the statement said. ...Al-Baghdadi proclaimed himself "caliph," or ruler of all Muslims, from the pulpit of the mosque on 4 July 2014, after the group's fighters overran parts of Iraq and Syria.