Mosul, after the fall. It has taken many months, and many thousands of lives, but Iraqi forces have finally reclaimed the northern city of Mosul from the ISIS militants who held it for three years.
Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city, had been ISIS’s biggest prize. After taking the city in June 2014, ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi stood in the pulpit of the city’s 12th-century al-Nuri mosque and delivered a now-infamous sermon declaring the creation of a new ISIS “caliphate.” It was a speech that quite literally put ISIS on the map.
The mosque is gone now, as is ISIS’s control of the …read more
Source: Vox