BEIRUT _ The Great Mosque of al-Nuri and the leaning minaret Hadba in the Iraqi city of Mosul were destroyed by Islamic State extremists Wednesday, government officials said.
Commandos from Iraq's elite Counter-Terrorism Service had gotten to within almost 50 yards of the landmarks in Mosul when the militants blew up the mosque and minaret, officials said.
The mosque was where Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi gave his first speech as caliph when the group blitzed through Mosul in 2014. A government offensive to retake the city was launched in October.
"The terrorist gangs of Daesh committed another history crime, the blowing up of the Nuri Mosque and the historic Hadba minaret," said Iraqi staff Lt. Gen. Abdulamir Yarallah, the overall commander of the Mosul offensive, in a statement Wednesday.
He referred to Islamic State by its Arabic acronym. The group is also known as ISIS or ISIL.
Brig. Gen. Yahya Rasool, spokesman of the Iraqi Joint Operations Command, said in a phone interview Wednesday that this would not stop Iraqi forces "from ousting terrorists from our land."
Islamic State blamed a U.S. airstrike for the destruction of the site.
But Col. Ryan Dillon, the American coalition spokesman for Iraq and Syria, said in a phone interview Wednesday "that the coalition did not conduct a strike at the time when the mosque was destroyed."
Religious buildings, such as churches and mosques, are protected against U.S. military airstrikes. The buildings can be targeted only with the approval of senior military officers, if commanders believe they have been overtaken by enemy forces.
That was not the case with the mosque, according to Maj. Gen. Joseph Martin, U.S. commander of coalition ground forces.
"As our Iraqi Security Force partners closed in on the al-Nuri mosque, ISIS destroyed one of Mosul and Iraq's great treasures," he said in a statement. "This is a crime against the people of Mosul and all of Iraq, and is an example of why this brutal organization must be annihilated. The responsibility of this devastation is laid firmly at the doorstep of ISIS."
