Mediaboss Marketing

MOSUL, Iraq -- The antiquities museum in the Iraqi city of Mosul is in ruins. Piles of rubble fill exhibition halls and a massive fire in the buildings basement has reduced hundreds of rare books and manuscripts to ankle-deep drifts of ash.

Associated Press reporters were granted rare access to the museum on Wednesday after Iraqi forces retook it from the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or ISIS, the day before.

Brig. Gen. Abbas al-Jabouri can smell victory against ISIS, CBS News correspondent Holly Williams reports. On Monday, he estimated there were only around 2,000 ISIS fighters left in the city.

Play Video

The battle to liberate Iraq's second largest city from Mosul has come to a critical stage. Iraqi troops backed by U.S airstrikes and special oper...

They dont have a chance, he told Williams.

After examining AP photographs of the destruction, two Iraqi archeologists confirmed that many of the artifacts destroyed by ISIS were the original ancient stone statues dating back thousands of years, rather than replicas as some Iraqi officials and experts previously claimed.

ISIS captured Mosul in 2014 and released a video the following year showing fighters smashing artifacts in the museum with sledgehammers and power tools. The voice narrating the ISIS video justified the acts with verses from the Quran referencing the Prophet Muhammads destruction of idols in the Kaaba.

These statues and idols, these artifacts, if God has ordered its removal, they became worthless to us even if they are worth billions of dollars, the narration said.

The sacking of the Mosul museum was just a single act in nearly three years of systematic destruction of Iraqs cultural heritage at the hands of ISIS. The militants leveled ancient palaces, temples and churches throughout Nineveh province and beyond, often releasing videos boasting of their acts. ISIS has even demolished some mosques, saying they were used to venerate saints, which ISIS considers a form of polytheism.

Inside the Mosul museums main exhibition hall, the floor was littered with the jagged remains of an ancient Assyrian bull statue and fragments from cuneiform tablets.

Play Video

In Iraq, U.S.-backed forces continued to battle ISIS in western Mosul over the weekend. Since late last month, more than 45,000 refugees are repo...

These are the remains of a lamassu and the lions of Nimrud, Layla Salih, an Iraqi archaeologist and former curator of the Mosul museum said as she examined AP photographs of the remains. Salih said when ISIS took over Mosul, the museum housed two massive lamassu statues - winged lions recovered from the ancient Assryrian city of Nimrud.

They were priceless, she said, they were in perfect condition.

Hiba Hazim Hamad, a former archaeology professor in Mosul, confirmed Salihs assessment, saying she believed the building held hundreds of ancient artifacts at the time ISIS overran the city, thousands if you count the small pieces, she added.

Adjoining rooms on the two main floors were largely empty save for a set of carved wooden coffins and doors left untouched. There were also smaller piles of rubble from what appeared to be additional destroyed artifacts, but the stones were crushed beyond recognition.

Play Video

U.S.-backed Iraqi forces are battling to retake the second-largest city in their country. Iraqi forces have seized control of the eastern part of...

Hamad said these could be the remains of destroyed replicas, but even if replicas were on display, the original pieces would have still been inside the museum in the basement safe when ISIS overran the building.

Its standard procedure for all museums (in Iraq), she said referring to the practice of keeping the most valuable pieces locked away from view.

Mosuls antiquities museum - built in the 1970s and the second largest in Iraq - once housed priceless Mesopotamian artifacts dating back thousands of years and a collection of rare Islamic and pre-Islamic texts.

Daesh came to Iraq to destroy our heritage because they dont have their own, said Federal Police Cpl. Abbas Muhammad, using the Arabic acronym for the group. Muhammad was one of the first to enter the building after it was retaken from ISIS Tuesday and was holding the site with a handful of other troops on Wednesday.

The museum now effectively marks the front line in the fight against ISIS for Mosuls western half after Iraqi forces retook it during a push up along the Tigris River. Troops have turned one of its halls and its garden into a makeshift base, placing machine gunners at the buildings corners under olive trees and blocking nearby roads with rubble, old cars and mounds of dirt.

The territory ISIS overran in Syria and Iraq is home to some of the regions most important historical sites and monuments. The extremist group is also believed to have looted ancient artifacts in order to sell them on the black market to finance its operations.

Lamia al-Gaylani, an Iraqi archaeologist who has been working in the field of preservation in Iraq since the 1960s, said ISIS destroyed Iraqs heritage in an effort to erase the countrys identity and legitimize their own state in its place.

They want their own history, she said. Especially in a city like Mosul where the people are very proud of their history, I think (ISIS) did this as a form of revenge.

While al-Gaylani said destruction like what was wrought at Mosuls museum sparked outrage across Iraq, she said she worries that that anger wont necessarily translate to better protection in the future for the heritage Iraq has left.

Most Iraqi people are focused on their own survival, she said, and the government is not concerned with heritage.

A handful of history books remained in the main entryway of the museum beside a bag of placards from old exhibits.

They describe flint objects found in Nineveh dating back to about 4,000 B.C., copper oil lamps discovered in Ur dating back to 2,600 B.C. and Sumerian statues dating back to 2,050 B.C.

Mosul is the heart of Iraqi civilization, said Federal Police Maj. Muhammad al-Jabouri, a Mosul native from a nearby neighborhood.

When I heard how Daesh destroyed this place, he said, as his eyes filled with tears. Death would have been a greater mercy for me.

The rest is here:
ISIS leaves Mosul museum in ruins as Iraq forces advance - CBS News

SIGN UP FOR OUR NEWSLETTER

The minority groups alliance, which also includes members of the Shiite Turkmen and Shabak community, has agreed to call their territory the Al Rafidein Region, according toDavid Lazar, chairman of theAmerican Mesopotamian Organization. Lazar said in a statement:

SIGN UP FOR OUR NEWSLETTER

Finally, in 2017, after all of the genocides, ethnic cleansings, persecutions, abuse, and injustice, representatives of the Turkmens, Assyrians, Yezidis and Shabak peoples are declaring a new coalition to brings their peoples together for the defense of their lives and the assertion of their rights as specified in the constitution of the Republic of Iraq.

The coalition has an aggressive legislative strategy in place, one that will engage members of the United States Congress, Ministers of the Iraqi Parliament, and key members of the international community, he added. Their aim is to establish this region as a semi-autonomous area with its own parliament, policies and defensive force, similar in composition and function to the Kurdish regional area in northern Iraq.

The coalition has brought together various groups representing the different minority groups, including the Turkmen Rescue Foundation (TRF), representing the Shiite Turkmen; the Al Rafedin Organization, representing the Assyrian Christians; and the Yazidi Independent Supreme Council, representing the Yazidis.

Dr. Ali Akram Al Bayati, a Shiite Turkmen who serves as TRF chief, told Breitbart News of the coalition:

We support it. The only way for us to keep our nations and people away from continuous attacks of terrorism is by establishing some form of self-administration under the Iraqi constitution and with the support of the international community, as they have supported the creation of northern Iraqs autonomous Kurdish Regional Government (KRG).

In November 2016,Al-Monitor reported that some Christians were seeking to create anautonomous territory in the Nineveh Plain region, home to many of the nations Christians and Yazidis. The region would take in refugees fleeing the city of Mosul after its liberation from the Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL).

Mosul, considered ISISs last major stronghold in Iraq, is expected to soon fall under the control of U.S.-backed local forces.

Also in November of last year, various Assyrian Christian militias came together to fight as an alliance to recapture their historical homeland in northern Iraq from the Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL).

The Nineveh Plains, a region in northern Iraqs Nineveh province, is the historical homeland of the Iraqi Christian community, considered one of the oldest in the world.

Christians, Yazidis, and Shiite Turkmen have been victims of genocide at the hands of ISIS and other jihadist groups, the United States and the United Nations have acknowledged.

View original post here:
Iraq: Christians, Yazidis Seeking Semi-Autonomous Region - Breitbart News

Stars and Stripes

Pentagon: Islamic State has lost access to Iraq's oil Stars and Stripes The official, who briefed reporters at the Pentagon on the condition of anonymity, said there are roughly 15,000 Islamic State fighters left in Iraq and Syria. About half of them are in or near Mosul or Raqqa, the terrorist group's two remaining urban ... and more »

Read more:
Pentagon: Islamic State has lost access to Iraq's oil - Stars and Stripes

New York Times

Trump's New Travel Ban Blocks Migrants From Six Nations, Sparing Iraq New York Times The new order continued to impose a 90-day ban on travelers, but it removed Iraq, a redaction requested by Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, who feared it would hamper coordination to defeat the Islamic State, according to administration officials. Trump removed Iraq from travel ban in recognition of fight against Isis,The Independent Trump's first victory in deportation feud is IraqWashington Times US says Iraq removed from travel ban partly for fight against Islamic StateReuters CNN -Washington Post -The White House all 2,250 news articles »

Visit link:
Trump's New Travel Ban Blocks Migrants From Six Nations, Sparing Iraq - New York Times

MOSUL, Iraq Iraqi forces on Tuesday recaptured the main government building in Mosul, the central bank branch and the museum where three years ago the militants filmed themselves destroying priceless statues.

A Rapid Response team stormed the Nineveh governorate complex in an overnight raid that lasted more than an hour, killing dozens of Islamic State fighters, spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Abdel Amir al-Mohammadawi said.

The buildings, already in ruins, were not being used by Islamic State, but their capture is a landmark in the push to retake the militants' last major stronghold in Iraq, now restricted to the heavy populated western half of Mosul.

Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi flew into to Mosul to visit the troops fighting to oust Islamic State from the city in which it declared its sprawling caliphate in 2014.

"Iraqis shall walk tall when the war is over," Abadi told state TV as he arrived.

Islamic State snipers continued to fire at the main government building after it was stormed, restricting the movements of the soldiers, and forces pushing further into western Mosul came under rifle and rocket fire.

"The fighting is strong because most of them are foreigners and they have nowhere to go," said the head of a sniper unit for the Rapid Response, al-Moqdadi al-Saeedi.

Some of Islamic State's foreign fighters are trying to flee Mosul, U.S. Air Force Brigadier General Matthew Isler said.

"The game is up," Isler told Reuters at the Qayyara West Airfield, south of the city. "They have lost this fight and what you're seeing is a delaying action."

Iraq's Counter Terrorism Service (CTS), which spearheaded the assaults that won back east Mosul, was on Tuesday moving into the western half of the city, the final and trickiest battleground in the nearly five-month campaign due to the dense civilian population living in its narrow streets.

STREET BY STREET

The CTS forces had fought their way well into the Mansour neighborhood and were trying to advance street by street, sending heavy fire on IS sniper positions, a Reuters correspondent visiting the special forces' front lines reported.

Federal Police units arrived at a house that CTS forces were stationed in but had to move out, one-by-one, to a neighboring building as IS rocket fire hit homes nearby.

One CTS operative on the ground said he thought it would take a few hours to retake Mansour, one of Mosul's biggest neighborhoods which lies southwest of the old city and could serve as a base to advance into the historic center.

U.S. special forces were seen walking between buildings in the same area, some carrying assault rifles with scopes and silencers. Helicopters attacked targets just to the north and thick smoke filled the sky from various explosions.

Dozens of civilians streamed out of the Mamoun district toward the CTS troops as machinegun fire rang out in the background, adding to a wave of people displaced from Mosul that now numbers 211,000, 40,000 of whom fled last week alone, U.N. agencies say.

Some 750,000 people were estimated to live in west Mosul when the offensive began on Feb. 19.

Among the symbolic buildings retaken overnight was one that had served at Islamic State's main court, known for sentences including stonings, throwing people off roofs and chopping off hands, reflecting the group's hardline ideology.

The militants looted the central bank when they took over the city in 2014 and took videos of themselves destroying archaeological artifacts. Traffic in antiquities that abound in the territory under their control, from Palmyra in Syria to Nineveh in Iraq, was one of their main sources of income.

The number of Islamic State fighters in Mosul was estimated at 6,000 at the start of the offensive on Mosul on Oct. 17, by the Iraqi military which estimates that several thousands have been killed since.

Lined up against them is a 100,000-strong force of Iraqi troops, Kurdish peshmerga fighters and Iranian-trained Shi'ite Muslim paramilitary groups.

(Writing by Maher Chmaytell; Editing by Robin Pomeroy)

WASHINGTON Faced with a growing test of resolve for a new U.S. president who vowed while campaigning to get tough on North Korea, Donald Trump's aides are pressing to complete a strategy review on how to counter Pyongyang's missile and nuclear threats.

SEOUL North Korea's latest weapons test showed it can accurately fire multiple medium-range ballistic missiles, an attack strategy that experts said could test the advanced U.S. THAAD anti-missile system which began to arrive in South Korea on Tuesday.

KABUL Gunmen dressed as doctors attacked a military hospital close to the U.S. embassy in the Afghan capital, Kabul, on Wednesday and were engaging security forces inside the building, officials and witnesses said.

More:
Iraqi forces retake Mosul museum, close in on IS-controlled old town - Reuters