dk_photos/iStock/Thinkstock(BAGHDAD) — ISIS has destroyed a historic mosque in western Mosul, the U.S. military announced on Wednesday.
The destruction of the Great Mosque of al-Nuri was announced by the Iraqi government on Wednesday. That mosque was the site where ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi made his speech calling for a caliphate on July 4, 2014.
The mosque stood in Mosul for more than eight centuries.
“As our Iraqi Security Force partners closed in on the al-Nuri mosque, ISIS destroyed one of Mosul and Iraq’s great treasures,” Maj. Gen. Joseph Martin, Commanding General of the Combined Joint Forces Land Component Command – Operation Inherent Resolve, said.
U.S. and Coalition Commander in Iraq and Syria, Lt. Gen. Steve Townsend called the news “sad.”
“I was just in Mosul Wednesday afternoon and close enough to see the mosque and its famous leaning minaret. Little did I know it was for the last time. This is just another example that ISIS is a cruel, heartless and god-less ideology that cannot be permitted to exist in the world.”
“This is a crime against the people of Mosul and all of Iraq, and is an example of why this brutal organization must be annihilated,” Martin added.
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