Islamic State militants blew up a 12th-century mosque in Mosul where the terror group’s leader declared its self-styled caliphate as Iraqi forces closed in on the site.
The explosion Wednesday evening leveled the Grand al-Nuri Mosque with its famous leaning minaret where three years ago the militant leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi said he was establishing a caliphate that would include parts of Syria and Iraq, the Iraqi military said in a statement Thursday.
Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said the landmark’s destruction was a last-ditch effort by the terror group.
”Blowing up the al-Hadba minaret and the al-Nuri mosque amounts to an official acknowledgment of defeat,” al-Abadi said.
The “terror gangs committed another historical crime by blowing up the al-Nuri mosque and its historical al-Habda minaret,” the Iraqi military said in a statement.
The Iraqis called the 150-foot minaret Al-Hadba, or “the hunchback,” because it leaned like the Tower of Pisa.
The black flag of ISIS has flown over the mosque since 2014, when militants overran the city.
A statement from the terror group accused the US of destroying the mosque in an airstrike, a claim the US-led coalition quickly rejected.
“The responsibility of this devastation is laid firmly at the doorstep of ISIS,” US Army Maj. Gen. Joseph Martin, commander of the coalition’s ground component, said in a statement.
“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,” he said.
On Wednesday, Iraqi forces said they had begun a push toward the mosque.
”This will not prevent us from removing them, no, killing them, not removing them, inside the Old City,” said Lt. Gen. Abdul Ghani al-Assadi, a commander in the country’s Counter Terrorism Service unit.
Russia last week had announced that it killed Baghdadi in an airstrike last month outside Raqqa, Syria.
US intelligence agencies have been unable to corroborate that claim and the Russian Defense Ministry has since said it is still investigating.