One of Iraq's most iconic landmarks, the Grand al-Nuri Mosque of Mosul, known for its famous leaning minaret, was blown up and completely destroyed on Wednesday, Reuters reported.
"The media office for Iraq's military distributed a picture taken from the air that appeared to show the mosque and minaret largely flattened and reduced to rubble."
Iraq's military released a statement accusing the so-called Islamic State's (IS) militants of the attack.
They claimed that as Iraqi forces closed in on the site, IS fighters filled the building with explosives and decided to take it down.
''Blowing up the al-Hadba minaret and the al-Nuri mosque amounts to an official acknowledgment of defeat,'' Iraqi Prime Minister, Haidar al-Abadi said.
While officials accused IS of destroying the mosque, the terrorist group's news agency, Amaq said that the attack was carried out by an American aircraft.
This claim was quickly denied by the U.S.-led coalition fighting the militant group.
Speaking to Reuters, the coalition's official spokesperson, U.S. Air Force Colonel John Dorrian said: "We did not strike in that area."
According to Reuters, the medieval mosque is the place where IS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi declared a "caliphate" spanning across parts of Syria and Iraq.
Its black flag had flown over the building since June 2014.
An iconic landmark destroyed
According to the BBC, "at the time of its completion, the minaret was 45m (150ft) high. But by the time the Ibn Battuta visited Mosul in the 14th Century, the minaret was already leaning significantly and had acquired its nickname - 'al-Hadba', or 'the humpback'".
Given that the minaret had not been renovated since 1970, made it particularly vulnerable to blasts that had hit in its surrounding area in recent years.
Its destruction is considered a blow to the country's heritage, which has suffered devastating losses in recent years.