Footage capturing moment #ISIS detonated al-Hadba Minaret in #Mosul. pic.twitter.com/EpQZ1ShjhF
— Mustafa Al-Khaqani (@Khaqani_M) June 21, 2017
The video is grainy and blurred, but the destruction is obviously the result of an engineered implosion, not an airstrike. At any rate, a fitting end to “The Caliphate”.
Islamic State militants blew up on Wednesday the Grand al-Nuri Mosque of Mosul and its famous leaning minaret, an Iraqi military statement said, as Iraqi forces seeking to expel the group from the city closed in on the site.
It was from this medieval mosque that the militants’ leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi declared a self-styled “caliphate” spanning parts of Syria and Iraq three years ago.
Islamic State’s Amaq news agency accused American aircraft of destroying the mosque.
The Iraqi military’s media office distributed a picture taken from the air that appears to show the mosque and minaret flattened in the middle of the small houses of the Old City, the historic district where the militants are besieged.
“The Daesh (Islamic State) terror gangs committed another historical crime by blowing up the al-Nuri mosque and its historical al-Hadba minaret,” the Iraqi military statement said.
The explosions happened as Iraq’s elite Counter Terrorism Service units, which have been battling their way through Mosul’s Old City, got to within 50 meters (164 ft) of the mosque, the statement said.
Iraqi forces earlier on Wednesday said they had started a push towards the mosque. A U.S.-led coalition is providing air and ground support to the Mosul offensive which began in October 2016.
The forces had encircled on Tuesday the jihadist group’s stronghold in the Old City, the last district under their control in Mosul.
Al-Baghdadi proclaimed himself “caliph”, or ruler of all Muslims, from the pulpit of the mosque on July 4, 2014, after the insurgents overran parts of Iraq and Syria.
His black flag had been flying over its 150-foot (45-metre)leaning minaret since June 2014.
Baghdadi’s speech from the mosque was also the first time he revealed himself to the world, and the footage broadcast then is to this day the only video recording of him.