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.
