”Irak har Eufrat, Tigris och en flod av blod”

The Battle of Mosul (2016–17) (Arabic: معركة الموصل‎‎, Ma‘rakat al-Mawṣil; Central Kurdish: شەڕی مووسڵ‎, Şeriy Mûsil) was a major military campaign launched by the Iraqi Government forces with allied militias, the Kurdistan Regional Government, and international forces to retake the city of Mosul from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), which had seized the city in June 2014. During the military intervention against ISIL, Iraqi and Peshmerga forces had already made unsuccessful attempts to retake the city 2015 and again in 2016, despite limited gains. The offensive, dubbed Operation "We Are Coming, Nineveh" (قادمون يا نينوى; Qadimun Ya Naynawa), began on 16 October 2016, with forces besieging ISIL-controlled areas in the Nineveh Governorate surrounding Mosul, and continued with Iraqi troops and Peshmerga fighters engaging ISIL on three fronts outside Mosul, going from village to village in the surrounding area in the largest deployment of Iraqi troops since the 2003 invasion of Iraq. The battle was also the world's single largest military operation in nearly 15 years, as well as being the most brutal urban battle since World War II. At dawn on 1 November 2016, Iraqi Special Operations Forces entered the city from the east. Met with fierce fighting, the government advance into the city was slowed by elaborate defenses and by the presence of civilians, but the Iraqi Prime Minister declared "full liberation of eastern side of Mosul" on 24 January 2017. Iraqi troops began their offensive to recapture western Mosul on 19 February 2017. The Battle of Mosul was concurrent with the Battle of Sirte (2016) in Libya, and with the Raqqa campaign conducted by the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) against ISIL's capital city and stronghold in Syria. On 9 July 2017, the Iraqi Prime Minister arrived in Mosul to announce the victory over ISIL, and an official declaration of victory was proclaimed on 10 July. However, sporadic clashes continued in the Old City. It was estimated that removing the explosives from Mosul and repairing the city over the next 5 years would require $50 billion dollars (2017 USD), while Mosul's Old City alone would cost about $1 billion USD to repair.