The Islamic State group on Wednesday blew up the Grand al-Nuri Mosque in Mosul and its famous leaning minaret, Iraq’s military said, according to AFP. It was here that the outfit’s leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi had declared himself the “caliph” in 2014 in his only public appearance.

The terror group, however, blamed a strike carried out by the United States for the destruction, in a statement released via its propaganda agency Amaq. But the US-led coalition has condemned the act and called it a crime against “the people of Mosul and all of Iraq”.

“We did not strike in that area,” coalition spokesman US Air Force Colonel John Dorrian told Reuters. US Army Major General Joseph Martin, who is the commander of the coalition’s ground component, said, “The responsibility of this devastation is laid firmly at the doorstep of ISIS.”

The destruction of two of Mosul’s best-known landmarks comes on the fourth day of an Iraqi offensive backed by the US-led coalition to take the Old City.

“Our forces were advancing toward their targets deep in the Old City, and when they got to within 50 metres (yards) of the Nuri mosque, Daesh [IS] committed another historical crime by blowing up the Nuri mosque and the Hadba mosque,” Staff Lieutenant General Abdulamir Yarallah, the overall commander of the Mosul offensive, said in a statement.

Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi believes that the Islamic State blowing up the al-Hadba minaret and the al-Nuri mosque “amounts to an official acknowledgement of defeat”.

On June 16, Russia’s Defence Ministry had said it was investigating whether one of its air strikes in Syria in May killed al-Baghdadi. There have been a number of reports of the group commander’s death in the past.