Iraqi forces battling the Islamic State group in Mosul on Monday retook an area where the jihadists levelled one of the city's most well-known shrines in 2014, officials said. "We retook control of Nabi Yunus area... raised the Iraqi flag above the tomb," Sabah al-Noman, spokesman for the Counter-Terrorism Service spearheading the Mosul offensive, told AFP.
He said two other neighbourhoods in eastern Mosul were also retaken from IS on Monday. In July 2014, weeks after overrunning Mosul and much of Iraq's Sunni Arab heartland, IS militants rigged the shrine and blew it up, sparking global outrage.
IS destroyed several other key landmarks in Mosul and elsewhere it considered as part of heretical rituals and practices.