Five IS bombs found hidden in Iraqi mosque: UN agency

The United Nations agency said it had discovered five bombs in the wall of Mosul’s iconic Al-Nuri Mosque, planted years ago by Islamic State militants during renovation work in the northern Iraqi city. The five “large-scale explosive devices designed to trigger mass destruction of the site” were discovered on Tuesday in the southern wall of the prayer hall by a UNESCO team working on the site, an agency official told AFP late Friday. Mosul’s Al-Nuri Mosque and its adjacent leaning minaret, the so-called Al-Hadba, or “the hunchback,” dating from the 12th century, were destroyed during the battle to retake the city from IS. The Iraqi army has accused ISIS, which has occupied Mosul for three years, of planting explosives in the site and blowing it up. UNESCO, the U.N. cultural agency, is working to restore the mosque and other architectural heritage sites in the city, most of which were reduced to rubble in the battle to retake it in 2017. “Iraqi armed forces immediately secured the area and the situation is now fully under control,” UNESCO added. One bomb was removed, but four other 1.5-kilogram devices “remain linked together” and are expected to be removed in the coming days, it said. “These explosive devices were hidden inside a wall that was specially rebuilt around them: this explains why they were not discovered when Iraqi forces cleared the site in 2020,” the agency said. Iraqi Major General Tahseen al-Khafaji, spokesman for the Joint Operations Command of Iraqi forces, confirmed the discovery of “several ISIS explosive devices in the al-Nuri mosque.” The remaining ammunition was found because of its “complex manufacturing.” Construction work at the site has been halted until the bombs are removed. It was from the al-Nuri mosque that Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, then leader of ISIS, declared the group’s “caliphate” in July 2014. The militants have seized large swaths of territory in Iraq and neighboring Syria, which they say are brutally ruled; Iraqi forces backed by the U.S.-led coalition drove ISIS out of Mosul in 2017.