Iraqi troops are clearing up a key neighbourhood in Mosul after making significant gains against Islamic State militants in the city and the prime minister declared an end to the extremist group's self-proclaimed caliphate.

An Iraqi commander said his forces have taken Mosul's landmark al-Nuri Mosque compound that was destroyed by the Islamic State group last week.

An enormous 15th-century tomb in south-east Turkey has been moved to make way for a hydroelectric dam on the Tigris river.

Iraq's United Nations ambassador has said there is no evidence that the Islamic State extremist group used chemical weapons in an attack in Mosul, the country's second-largest city.

Iraqi forces have captured a government complex in western Mosul from the so called Islamic State group, a senior military commander has said.

Iraq's militarised police forces have entered Mosul International Airport, taking over the runway amid fierce clashes with Islamic State fighters, according to officials.

Government troops are now in "full control" of eastern Mosul, according to Iraq's military, after routing Islamic State militants from that part of the city.

It’s TheTote.com Galway Hurdle day in Ballybrit and Tigris River looks the value option to land the €177,000 winner’s prize in the feature.

Road To Riches is on course to be the highest-rated horse to ever run in theTote.com Galway Plate on Wednesday week.

The US warned its citizens to be ready to leave Iraq in the event of what it has said could be a catastrophic collapse of the country’s largest hydro-electric dam near Mosul.

The Henry de Bromhead-trained Sadler’s Risk belied his relative inexperience over fences when taking an eventful renewal of the Ladbrokes Munster National yesterday afternoon at Limerick racecourse.

Oighear Dubh can land the nap in the John Lynch Memorial Maiden Hurdle at Listowel this afternoon.

Jockey Jack Kennedy once again showed his burgeoning talent in best light when recording a near 60-1 double yesterday afternoon at Cork racecourse.

Quite a tricky looking card at Wexford today, where the ground is expected to ride on the easy side of good. Although Miss Me Now would prefer a little more cut in the ground, the Willie Mullins-trained mare will be very hard to beat in the closing bumper.

Three meetings across the weekend, and plenty of top-class racing to savour. At the Curragh this afternoon, Toscanini gets the nap to take the Group 3 Renaissance Stakes for trainer Mick Halford and jockey Shane Foley.

Cork and Roscommon tracks host evening meetings, and management at the former, which is being run in aid of the Irish Injured Jockeys’ Fund and Mallow Hospital, are asking for a minimum entry donation of €5, all of which will go to the two charities.

IS militants have reduced the amount of water flowing to government-held areas in Iraq’s western Anbar province, an official said.

Iraqi forensic teams in the newly-recaptured city of Tikrit have started exhuming bodies from mass graves believed to contain some of the hundreds of soldiers killed by Islamic State (IS) militants last year, a government spokesman said yesterday.

UNESCO appeals to global community to protect heritage

Iraqi troops and Shia militias battled IS yesterday south of the militant-held city of Tikrit, though roadside bombs and suicide attacks slowed their advance on Saddam Hussein’s hometown.

Iraq’s armed forces, backed by Shi’ite militia, attacked Islamic State (IS) strongholds north of Baghdad yesterday as they launched an offensive to retake the city of Tikrit and the surrounding Sunni Muslim province of Salahuddin.

Islamic extremists in Iraq killed 80 men from a Yazidi village and abducted their wives and children, eyewitnesses said today, insisting the religious community is still at risk after a week of US and Iraqi airstrikes on the militants.

Airstrikes pounded the area around Iraq’s largest dam today in an effort to drive out militants who captured it earlier this month, as reports emerged of the massacre of some 80 members of the Yazidi religious minority by Islamic extremists.

Iraq’s Mosul dam, held by the Islamic State group, is being targeted in airstrikes, residents there say.

Islamist militants surged across northern Iraq towards the capital of the Kurdish region yesterday, sending tens of thousands of Christians fleeing for their lives.

Iraqi forces backed by tanks and helicopter gunships are battling insurgents in Saddam Hussein’s home town of Tikrit, one of two major cities seized by Sunni militants during a rapid advance across the north earlier this month.

Iraq’s top Shi’ite cleric yesterday stepped up the pressure on politicians to agree on Iraq’s next prime minister, after incumbent Nouri al-Maliki lost the confidence of former allies in the fight against Sunni militants.

Al-Qaeda-inspired militants seized effective control of Saddam Hussein’s hometown of Tikrit, expanding their offensive closer to the Iraqi capital as mass beheadings were being reported.

Al Qaida-inspired militants have seized control of Saddam Hussein’s home town of Tikrit.

You’d love to have been sitting behind the Ballydoyle contingent on the plane back from Dubai last weekend.

Aidan and Joseph O’Brien shared an early double with two-year-old fillies Dance With Another and Sparrow at the Curragh yesterday, a brace which brought the champion jockey’s tally to 121 domestic wins.

Suicide attackers blew up explosives-laden vehicles next to an elementary school and a police station in a small northern Iraqi village on Sunday, killing at least 13 people, many of them children.

A bombing targeting a stream where youngsters sought refuge from the summer heat in Iraq has killed four people, officials said.

A suicide bomber crashed a car packed with explosives into one of the gates of Baghdad’s heavily guarded Green Zone today, killing seven people, including three security officers, Iraqi officials said.

A double bombing has struck at an upscale neighbourhood Iraq’s capital, killing at least 21 people.

Eight people have died today after three bombs ripped through a sprawling Baghdad market at the beginning of a Muslim festival.

Most of the 35 Iraqi terror suspects who tunnelled their way out of a detention facility today were quickly recaptured, a security official said.

SUICIDE bombers struck near three hotels popular with Western journalists and businessmen yesterday just as Iraq announced the execution of Saddam Hussein’s notorious cousin known as “Chemical Ali”.

Three co-ordinated bomb blasts struck near hotels in central Baghdad killing at least 11 people today.

A fresh wave of bombings swept the Baghdad area today as Iraq braced itself for more violence ahead of the planned withdrawal of US troops from major cities next week.

THE United States handed over control of the Green Zone and Saddam Hussein’s presidential palace to Iraqi authorities yesterday in a ceremonial move described by the country’s prime minister as a restoration of Iraq’s sovereignty.

SHI’ITE extremists lobbed more rockets or mortar shells at the US protected Green Zone yesterday as American and Iraqi troops engaged militants in the most violent clashes in weeks in Baghdad.