Iraqi soldiers walk in a damaged Mosul street. Photo / AP
Iraqi soldiers walk in a damaged Mosul street. Photo / AP
Iraq's Prime Minister entered Mosul to declare victory in the nine-month battle for control of the former Isis stronghold, signalling the near-end of the most gruelling campaign against the group to date and dealing a near-fatal blow to the survival of its self-declared caliphate.
Haider al-Abadi was thronged by menholding cameraphones as music blared and others danced. "This is all a result of the sacrifices of the heroic fighters," he said.
But the sound of airstrikes echoed through the skies and smoke rose from the last pocket of territory the militants control. The stench of bodies filled the air. Between the rubble and rebar were the arms of a young child, still wrapped in pale pink sleeves.
The UN predicts that at least US$1 billion will be required to rebuild Mosul's basic infrastructure.
When the offensive was launched last October, US officials were privately predicting a two-month fight. Instead, the fight lasted for nine months, longer than the siege of Stalingrad. It has cost thousands of lives, uprooted hundreds of thousands of people and shattered vast stretches of the city.
Isis is on a path to defeat in the Syrian city of Raqqa, but that battle is still only just getting started.
Over the past three years since Isis leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi declared a "caliphate" in Mosul, his group has been driven out of 60 per cent of the territory it once controlled.Yet Isis is prepared to fight for every inch it holds.
And there is the question of how will the militants seek to regroup in the shadows of the ruined cities they have lost, to wage the kind of insurgency that fuelled their rise in the decade before their conquests.
