11 July, 2017
On Monday evening, Iraq's Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi came to Mosul for the second day in a row to declare "total victory".
The battle to recapture Mosul was the deadliest and most hard in the ongoing coordinated campaign against the extremist group.
Shortly after al-Abadi's speech, the coalition congratulated him on the victory against "a brutal and evil enemy", according to a statement.
Since then, Iraqi troops, backed by militias and Kurdish Peshmerga forces, managed to regain most parts of the city, occupied by IS in 2014. One of the abducted Harjit Masih claimed that he dodged the IS militants and fled from their captivity.A resident of Babowal village, Harbhajan Kaur, whose son Harsimranjit Singh was also abducted, said, "I know Iraq has wrested Mosul back from IS, and immediately our CM tweeted that Sushma ji has assigned Union minister of state for external affairs V K Singh to ensure their safe return from Iraq."Malkit Ram, whose brother Nand Lal and nephew Sandeep Kumar are among the Indians abducted by IS, said he had heard about the victory of Iraqi forces in Mosul and also Amarinder's tweet".
Iraqi commanders said gains slowed to a crawl in recent days as Islamic State fighters used their families - including women and children - as human shields.
Islamic State has captured most of a village south of Mosul despite losing control of its stronghold in the city, an Iraqi army officer and residents said, deploying guerrilla-style tactics as its self-proclaimed caliphate crumbles.
The current Vice President also praised Iran for supplying advice and arms to Iraqi forces.
More than 897,000 people were displaced, and the United Nations said there was no end in sight to the humanitarian crisis in Iraq despite the conclusion of the fighting.
The UN refugee agency said it could be many months before civilians are able to return to their homes.
The battle also has decimated Mosul's infrastructure in its western half, where fighting was fiercest.
"The scale and gravity of the loss of civilian lives during the military operation to retake Mosul must immediately be publicly acknowledged at the highest levels of government in Iraq and states that are part of the US -led coalition", said Lynn Maalouf, the research director for Mideast at Amnesty. Iraq's civil defense rescue teams - a branch of the Interior Ministry - said about 65 percent of the buildings in the Old City, many dating back centuries, were severely damaged or destroyed.
Standing with members of the security forces, Abadi hailed the retaking of Mosul-where IS dealt Iraqi troops a devastating defeat three years ago-as a key moment in the war against the jihadists.
Iraqi forces were earlier on Monday still fighting to eliminate the last pockets of IS resistance in Mosul, with jihadist fighters surrounded in a sliver of territory in Mosul's Old City.
The IS defeat in Mosul dealt a huge blow to the group's so-called Islamic "caliphate" - territory that the militants seized, spanning large swaths of both Iraq and Syria - but also killed thousands, left entire neighborhoods in ruins and displaced almost 900,000 from their homes.
Information for this article was contributed by Susannah George of The Associated Press; and by Louisa Loveluck and Mustafa Salim of The Washington Post.
