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Iraqi government forces fighting to drive Islamic State from western Mosul have recaptured the main government building, the central bank branch and the museum where militants had smashed statues and artefacts three years ago.
The government buildings had been destroyed and were not used by Islamic State, also known as Isis, but their capture still represented a symbolic victory in the battle over the militants' last major stronghold in Iraq.
An elite rapid response team stormed the Nineveh governorate building and government complex in an overnight raid, spokesman Lieut Colonel Abdel Amir al-Mohammadawi said.
They also seized a building that housed Islamic State’s main court of justice, known for its harsh sentences, including stonings, throwing people off building roofs and chopping off hands, reflecting Islamic State’s extreme ideology.
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“They killed tens from Daesh,” Lieut Mohammadawi said, referring to Islamic State by one of its Arabic acronyms. The raid took over an hour.
The militants looted the central bank when they took over the city in 2014 and took videos of themselves destroying statues and artefacts.
Illegal traffic in antiquities that abound in the territory under their control, from the sites of Palmyra in Syria to Nineveh in Iraq, was one of their main source of income.
The breakthrough paves the way for the US-backed forces to attack the militants in the old city of Mosul, the most complicated phase in the nearly five-month campaign due to the density of the population and the narrowness of the alleyways. The militants are dug in amongst civilians in the historic district.
It was from the Nuri Mosque in the old city that the group’s leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, declared in 2014 a caliphate also spanning parts of neighbouring Syria.
The old city lies on the western bank of the Tigris river that cuts Mosul in two. About 750,000 people were estimated by aid organisations to live in west Mosul when the offensive started on this side of the city on February 19th.
The Iraqi forces took the eastern half in January, after 100 days of fighting. They are backed by air and ground support from a US-led coalition.
Thousands displaced
Defeating Islamic State in Mosul would crush the Iraqi wing of the self-declared caliphate, which also suffering setbacks in Syria.
US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces cut the last main road out of the Islamic State capital there, Raqqa, on Monday. Islamic State is also fighting off the Russian-backed Syrian army as well as and Turkey and allied Syrian rebels.
The number of Islamic State fighters in Mosul was estimated at 6,000 at the start of the offensive on October 17th, by the Iraqi military who estimate several thousands have been killed since.
Lined up against them is a 100,000-strong force of Iraqi troops, Kurdish peshmerga fighters and Iranian-trained Shia Muslim paramilitary groups.
More than 40,000 people fled their homes in the past week. Agencies say camps to accommodate them are nearly full even though the United Nations said last month that more than 400,000 people still in western Mosul could be displaced.
Several thousands have been killed and wounded in the fighting, both civilians and military, according to aid organisations.
Reuters