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 city. The militants destroyed the 842-year-old mosque as Iraqi forces closed in on the ancient complex as part of their final push to retake Mosul. It was a symbolic move of a very different sort, one that signals just how far ISIS’s fortunes in Iraq have fallen in a few short years.
The striking photos below are some of the first taken inside the city since it was reclaimed from ISIS.
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