"An admission of defeat" is how Iraq's PM greeted the news ISIL had destroyed the al-Nuri mosque in Mosul.
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ISIL’s destruction of one of the wonders of the Muslim religious world, the Great mosque of al-Nuri in Mosul,
has been greeted with fury around the world.
However Iraq’s prime minister immediately said it was “an admission of defeat”, as the mosque was the setting
for the founding declaration of ISIL’s caliphate back in 2014, when the Islamic militant fighters overran Iraq’s second
city, putting the army to flight.
“ISIL showed today their ugliness through the destruction of Iraqi, namely the Hadba minaret. Today, we call upon
all Iraqi civil society organisations and human rights organisations to register these crimes as terrorist crimes,” said journalist
Ameer al-Khfajy.
The ancient elegance of al-Nuri, despoiled by ISIL leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and his men, has gone forever, and
al-Baghdadi, often rumoured dead, is also long-gone from the city. It is left to its some 100,000 trapped civilians to bear witness
to the destruction that has followed in the wake of ISIL here, and wherever it has swarmed.