UAE to Rebuild Iraq’s Iconic Mosul Mosque Destroyed by ISIS

Mosul’s Great Mosque of al-Nuri. (Reuters)
Mosul’s Great Mosque of al-Nuri. (Reuters)
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UAE to Rebuild Iraq’s Iconic Mosul Mosque Destroyed by ISIS

Mosul’s Great Mosque of al-Nuri. (Reuters)
Mosul’s Great Mosque of al-Nuri. (Reuters)

The United Arab Emirates announced on Monday that the Gulf state will offer $50 million to rebuild Mosul’s Great Mosque of al-Nuri that was destroyed during last year’s battle against the ISIS terrorist group in Iraq.

UAE Culture Minister Noura al-Kaabi said her country would put forward $50.4 million (41.2 million euros) for the task.

"The five-year project is not just about rebuilding the mosque, the minaret and the infrastructure, but also about giving hope to young Iraqis," she said during a ceremony at Baghdad's National Museum.

She called on the international community "to unite to protect universal heritage sites, especially those in our Arab region" in theaters of conflict.

"The millenia-old civilization must be preserved."

The deal was signed by Kaabi and her Iraqi counterpart, Faryad Rawanduzi, in the presence of UNESCO's Iraq representative Louise Haxthausen.

"This is an ambitious, highly symbolic project for the resurrection of Mosul and Iraq," said Haxthausen.

"The work has already begun, the site is now protected... we must first clear the site, remove the rubble (and) document, before we can begin reconstructing the mosque and its minaret."

"This is a historic partnership, the largest and unprecedented cooperation to rebuild cultural heritage in Iraq ever," UNESCO chief Audrey Azoulay said in a statement.

The first year of reconstruction will focus on documenting and clearing the site, UNESCO said.

The following four years will focus on the restoration and "faithful reconstruction" of the mosque, its minaret as well as the city's historic gardens and open spaces.

The famed 12th century mosque and its leaning minaret -- dubbed "the hunchback", or al-Habda, by locals -- was destroyed in June 2017.

The Iraqi army accused ISIS of destroying it with explosives as Iraqi forces steadily retook ground in the embattled city.

The Al-Nuri mosque is named after Nureddine al-Zinki, who once ruled over Aleppo and Mosul and ordered the construction of the mosque in 1172.

Al-Habda, which maintained the same structure for nine centuries, was one of the only remnants of the original construction.

Decorated with geometric brick designs, the minaret was long a symbol of the city and it was printed on 10,000 Iraqi dinar banknotes.



Google-Backed Coalition to Help Scale Ocean, Rock Carbon Removals

A Google logo is seen at a company research facility in Mountain View, California, US, May 13, 2025. (Reuters)
A Google logo is seen at a company research facility in Mountain View, California, US, May 13, 2025. (Reuters)
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Google-Backed Coalition to Help Scale Ocean, Rock Carbon Removals

A Google logo is seen at a company research facility in Mountain View, California, US, May 13, 2025. (Reuters)
A Google logo is seen at a company research facility in Mountain View, California, US, May 13, 2025. (Reuters)

A coalition backed by Google, Stripe and Shopify will spend $1.7 million to buy carbon removal credits from three early stage firms on behalf of the tech giants to help scale up the nascent markets, an executive told Reuters.

The world is expected to need to suck between five and 10 billion tons a year of carbon emissions out of the atmosphere by mid-century to reach its climate goals, yet at the moment most technologies are small scale.

The coalition, called Frontier, is also backed by H&M Group, JPMorgan Chase and Salesforce, among others.

The group, which aggregates demand from its members, will spend $1.7 million to buy credits from US-firm Karbonetiq, Italy-based Limenet and Canadian firm pHathom.

By contracting to buy early, the firms are better able to hire, raise finance and get the technologies off the ground, said Hannah Bebbington, head of deployment at Frontier.

"It allows companies to demonstrate commercial viability," she said.

Frontier's support for these early stage firms, which aim to lock emissions away in the ocean or in rocks and industrial waste, marks its fifth series of commitments.

Frontier, which was set up in 2022, aims to invest at least $1 billion in carbon removal credits between 2022 and 2030. It has already committed $600 million, some on the series of pre-purchases and the bulk on a series of off-take agreements with larger firms. Last week, it agreed to pay $41 million for 116,000 tons from waste biomass firm Arbor.

For oceans, the aim is to increase the alkalinity of the water, helping it to lock away more carbon emissions. This is often done by adding "quicklime", made from limestone.

For the mineralization technologies, meanwhile, projects attempt to speed up the process whereby rocks and industrial waste naturally absorb carbon dioxide, for example by crushing up the material to create a larger surface area.

Bebbington said both technologies had the potential to be impactful because they could be scaled quickly and cheaply.

"We think (they) are extremely compelling from that really cheap at really large scale perspective."