A UN agency reported that while doing restoration work in the famous Al Nouri Mosque in Mosul, northern Iraq, it had found five bombs hidden in a wall that had been planted there years ago by Daesh fighters.
A Unesco representative told AFP late on Friday that the Unesco team working at the site discovered five “large-scale explosive devices, designed to trigger a massive destruction of the site” in the prayer hall’s southern wall on Tuesday.
The 12th-century Al Nouri Mosque in Mosul and the nearby leaning minaret known as Al Hadba, or the “hunchback,” were destroyed in the fight to retake the city from Daesh. Daesh, which controlled Mosul for three years, was accused by the Iraqi army of setting explosives there and detonating them. Unesco, the UN cultural agency, has restored the mosque and other architectural heritage sites in the city; during the battle to retake it in 2017, much of it was reduced to rubble.
“The Iraqi armed forces immediately secured the area and the situation is now fully under control,” said Unesco. Four additional 1.5-kg devices “remain connected to each other” and are anticipated to be cleared in addition to the one bomb that was removed.
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