Baghdad 11 Jul (ANA) - The senior US commander in Iraq has warned that the war against the so-called Islamic State (IS) is not over, despite a "historic" victory in Mosul. Lt Gen Stephen Townsend told the BBC there were still IS fighters in Iraq. He said the government should reach out to Iraq's Sunni Muslim minority to stop IS from renewing itself. "If we're to keep... ISIS 2.0 from emerging, the Iraqi government is going to have to do something pretty significantly different," he said. "They're going to have to reach out and reconcile with the Sunni population, and make them feel like their government in Baghdad represents them." Iraq's Shia Muslim majority are regarded as heretics by IS, a Sunni Islamist group. Iraq's Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi has formally declared victory over IS in Mosul, after a nearly nine-month battle that left large areas in ruins, killed thousands of civilians and displaced more than 920,000 others. Mr Abadi waved a national flag with troops after announcing the "collapse of the terrorist state of falsehood". In a report on Tuesday, Amnesty International said Iraqi and coalition forces had used unnecessarily powerful weapons in densely-populated areas. IS fighters were also accused by Amnesty of committing serious abuses. Commanders from the US-led coalition that has provided air and ground support to Iraqi forces said the urban combat had been most intense since World War Two. Mr Abadi made the declaration of victory at the operations room of the Counter-Terrorism Service, whose elite forces were the first to enter Mosul in November. Using a pejorative term for IS based on an Arabic acronym of its former name, he said: "I announce from here the end and the failure and the collapse of the terrorist state of falsehood and terrorism, which the terrorist Daesh announced from Mosul." (ANA)

FA/ANA/11 July 2017--------