Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi arrived in Mosul on Sunday to announce the city’s ‘liberation’ from the Islamic State, and to congratulate the Iraqi armed forces and people on their ‘victory’ in the city after nearly nine months of urban warfare, and bringing an end to jihadist rule in the city, the WSJ reported. As a reminder, Mosul is where the Islamic State achieved its greatest military victory when it captured the city in just four days in June 2014 and handed the Iraqi military a humiliating defeat, sending shock waves through the region. Subsequent looting of Mosul’s central bank provided the Islamic State with over $400 million in “seed funding” which the terrorist organization promptly put to bad use.
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The Iraqi PMI was expected to make an official victory announcement in the northern city later Sunday, after U. S.-backed Iraqi forces waged more than eight months of battle to reclaim it.
Troops have in recent days been fighting to clear the final Islamic State-occupied pockets of Mosul’s dense Old City, on the western bank of the Tigris river.
Loaders and other heavy machinery cleared paths for Iraqi soldiers, who appeared at ease ahead of the recapture, despite bursts of gunfire nearby.
This post was published at Zero Hedge on Jul 9, 2017.
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