MESOP NEWS SITUATION REPORT MOSUL – TOP OF THE AGENDA (COMMENTARIES BY RELEVANT SOURCES)

Mosul Battle Intensifies With Mosque Explosion

An Iraqi general accused the self-proclaimed Islamic State of blowing up Mosul’s eight-hundred year-old Grand Mosque of al-Nuri, where Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi declared the creation of a caliphate (Al Jazeera) in 2014. Islamic State media said the mosque was struck by coalition warplanes, a charge U.S. and Iraqi commanders have denied (VOA). Coalition officials said militants exploded the structure as Iraqi troops closed in on them in a planned attack on the twelfth-century mosque compound (WaPo). Iraqi forces began an assault on Mosul’s militant-held Old City on Sunday as the battle to recapture the city (VOA) entered its ninth month.

ANALYSIS

“Over the past eight months, Iraqi security forces­ have slowly squeezed Islamic State militants into Mosul’s historic city center, around a square mile of territory on the banks of the Tigris. The city’s most symbolic landmark, the Great Mosque of al-Nuri, was tantalizingly near,” Loveday Morris writes for the Washington Post.

“The loss of the site is another devastating blow to Iraq’s heritage, which has been ravaged by fourteen years of war since the U.S.-led invasion to oust Saddam Hussein,” Martin Chulov and Kareem Shaheen write for the Guardian.

“ISIS will be defeated at some time in the future here. But my concern is, until you solve the governance problem, that we’ll be right back where we are again in two years,” former U.S. Army Chief of Staff Raymond T. Odierno said at a CFR event.