SHAFAQNA- Iqna: The UN’s cultural agency said that the first phase of a landmark reconstruction of Iraq’s al-Nouri Mosque in Mosul, which was blown up by the Daesh terrorist group in 2017, has concluded.
UNESCO announced on Monday that an important stage of the reconstruction process, which included rebuilding the 12th-century monument’s famed leaning minaret, has finished. It said this stage began in October by clearing the mosque and nearby areas of landmines, removing debris, and restoring the Mosque’s dome. The Mosque restoration plan is the most eye-catching part of a $100 million UNESCO-led heritage reconstruction of Mosul. Former Daesh ringleader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi declared a caliphate from the al-Nouri Mosque in the summer of 2014, only for his terrorist forces to blow it up in June 2017 as Iraqi forces closed in.
