Baghdad, Iraq: The destruction of a Mosul mosque where Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi gave his first sermon as leader of the Islamic State group is an admission of defeat, Iraq’s prime minister said on Thursday.

‘It’s an official declaration of defeat,’ Haider al-Abadi said in a statement issued hours after news that the Nuri mosque, and the iconic ‘Hadba’ leaning minaret next to it, had been blown up on Wednesday.

Jihadists on Wednesday blew up Mosul’s iconic leaning minaret and the adjacent mosque where their leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi declared himself ‘caliph’ in his only public appearance in 2014, an Iraqi commander said.

The Islamic State group swiftly issued a statement via its Amaq propaganda agency blaming a US strike.

‘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.

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 on the Old City, where holdout jihadists are making a bloody last stand.

It adds to a long list of Iraqi heritage sites and monuments the jihadist organisation has destroyed in Iraq and Syria since Baghdadi created his ‘caliphate’ straddling both countries, almost exactly three years ago.

IS proclaimed its self-styled ‘caliphate’ in June 2014, after sweeping across Iraq’s Sunni Arab heartland, an unprecedented experiment in jihadist statehood.

The Iraq-born Baghdadi appeared at the Nuri mosque in Mosul, Iraq’s second city, days later to declare himself ‘caliph’ and urge the world’s Muslims to move in.

It remains the last public appearance to date for the jihadist supremo, whose fate and whereabouts are currently unclear and whose ‘state’ has been shrinking for two years.

Iraqi forces on Sunday launched an assault on the Old City of Mosul, eight months into a huge offensive to wrest back the northern city from the jihadists, who had made it their de facto Iraqi capital.