UN Recovers Five Bombs Inside Iraq Mosque

The United Nations (UN) has claimed that it discovered five bombs in a wall of Mosul’s Al-Nuri mosque, allegedly planted by the Islamic State (ISIS) group years ago.

The UNESCO team, conducting restoration work in the northern Iraqi city, found these large-scale devices designed to cause significant destruction to the site.

The agency’s representative informed AFP on Friday that the explosives were located in the southern wall of the prayer hall.

Naija News understands that the Al-Nuri mosque and the leaning minaret Al-Hadba, both significant historical structures, were destroyed during the battle to liberate the city from IS.

The Iraqi army has accused IS of planting explosives at the site and detonating them.

UNESCO has been actively involved in the restoration of this site and other architectural heritage in Mosul, much of which was devastated during the 2017 battle for the city.

“The Iraqi armed forces immediately secured the area, and the situation is now fully under control,” UNESCO noted.

According to the report, one of the explosives was removed, but four others remain connected to each other and are expected to be cleared in the coming days.

“These explosive devices were hidden inside a wall, which was specially rebuilt around them: it explains why they could not be discovered when the site was cleared by Iraqi forces in 2020,” the agency said.

Iraqi General Tahseen al-Khafaji, representative of the Joint Operations Command of different Iraqi forces, verified the finding of “multiple explosive devices from ISIS jihadists in Al-Nuri mosque.”

Reports had it that it was in the Al-Nuri mosque that Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi, the former leader of IS, declared the formation of the group’s “caliphate” in July 2014.

The jihadists seized extensive areas of land in Iraq and the nearby Syria, which they governed with cruelty.

In 2017, Iraqi forces, supported by a US-led coalition, expelled IS from Mosul.