Iraq’s prime minister arrives in Mosul to declare victory over ISIS – Washington Post

(Sarah Parnass,Jesse Mesner-Hage/The Washington Post)

MOSUL Iraqs prime minister showed up Sunday in the city of Mosul to declare victory in the nine-month battle for control of the Islamic States former capital in Iraq, signaling the near-end of the most grueling campaign against the extremist group to date and dealing a near-fatal blow to the survival of its self-declared caliphate.

Prime Minister Haidar al-Abadi has arrived in Mosul to personally congratulate the Iraqi security forces on achieving victory, a statement from his office said.

The official Twitter account of the prime minister tweeted a photo of him shaking hands and congratulating Iraqi forces for liberating the city.

But air strikes continued as the afternoon wore on, with Iraqi special forces continuing their push against a last pocket of Islamic State territory, thought to be no more than 200 yards deep and 50 wide.

Thousands of civilians had poured out of that shrinking redoubt in recent weeks, many of them in tears as they stumbled to safety. Stuck between the Islamic State and the U.S.-led coalition airstrikes propelling the campaign to save them, many said they had spent weeks with barely any food or water. Without medical care, the wounded had died in or under their homes.

Mosul was the largest city to fall to Islamic State control. It was from the citys medieval mosque that the groups leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, declared the birth of a caliphate spanning swaths of Syria and Iraq.

Three years later, that building lies in ruins, after the Islamist militants blew it up as Iraqi forces moved in. Mosuls recapture comes as the Islamic State has lost more than 60 percent of its territory and 80 percent of its revenue, according to analysis by IHS Markit.

The loss of Mosul means ISIS is no longer the same, for better or worse. Its no longer the quasi-state that it projected itself to be, said Hassan Hassan, a resident fellow at the Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy.

The offensive has been grueling. According to aid groups, thousands of civilians have been killed. Much of the western districts have been shattered by U.S.-led coalition airstrikes, as well as Islamic State car bombs and shelling.

In the final days of the battle, commanders said militants had sent suicide bombers out among fleeing civilians and used children as human shields in the winding alleyways of the Old City.

Standing in the ruins of what was once a family home, Staff Sgt. Rasoul Saeed said the fight had been incomparable. It is the hardest battle we have ever fought. At the end we are bogged down in alleyways, without vehicles, alone against the enemy, he said. And they have got women in there, they have trapped children.

The city, like others in Iraq, has been devastated by the military campaign to dislodge the Islamic State. The United Nations predicts that at least $1 billion will be required to rebuild Mosuls basic infrastructure. More extensive reconstruction could cost billions more.

In the Old City, streets have been leveled. Rubble and twisted rebar are piled high through the alleyways, burying mattresses, flip-flops and other remnants of the lives Islamic State fighters built there. No one here knows how many civilians also remain under the rubble of their homes.

Liz Sly contributed to this report from Beirut.

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Iraq's prime minister arrives in Mosul to declare victory over ISIS - Washington Post