The UN cultural agency has discovered five bombs hidden within the walls of the historic al-Nouri Mosque in the city of Mosul in northern Iraq, a remnant of the so-called Islamic State (IS) militant group’s rule over the area. The mosque, famous for its 12th-century leaning minaret, was destroyed by IS in 2017 and has […]
By Timour Azhari and Khalid Al-Mousily MOSUL, Iraq (Reuters) – It was the simple night-time act of watering flowers on his street in Mosul’s Old City that made Saqr Zakaria stop and think about just how safe this last bastion of Islamic State militants had become since it was liberated in 2017. “I thought for […]
MARCIA BIGGS: The former commander of coalition forces in Iraq, Lieutenant General Stephen Townsend, recently listed 81 locations where bombs were dropped, but had not yet exploded. Facilities used to make weapons were often on the list of high-value targets for the coalition. So now those places are twice as likely to contain dangerous items. […]