ISIS destroys 840-year-old al-Nuri mosque in Mosul

The Islamic State group destroyed Mosul’s al-Nuri mosque and its iconic leaning minaret known as al-Hadba when fighters detonated explosives inside the structures on Wednesday night, Iraq’s Ministry of Defense said.

Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi tweeted early on Thursday that the destruction was an admission by the militants that they are losing the fight for Iraq’s second-largest city.

“Daesh’s bombing of the al-Hadba minaret and the al-Nuri Mosque is a formal declaration of their defeat,” al-Abadi said, using the Arabic acronym for the Islamic State group.

The mosque, which is also known as Mosul’s Great Mosque, is where IS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi declared a so-called Islamic caliphate in 2014 shortly after Mosul was overrun by the militants. The minaret that leaned like Italy’s Tower of Pisa had stood for more than 840 years.