Iraqi government troops have seized the ruined mosque in Mosul from where Islamic State proclaimed its self-styled caliphate three years ago, Reuters reported quoting the Iraqi military.

The seizure of the 850-year-old Grand al-Nuri Mosque is a huge symbolic victory for the Iraqi forces fighting to recapture Mosul, which had served as Islamic State's de facto capital in Iraq.

“Their fictitious state has fallen,” an Iraqi military spokesman, Brigadier General Yahya Rasool, told state TV.

Militants blew up the medieval mosque and its famed leaning minaret a week ago as U.S.-backed Iraqi forces started an attack.