Mosul Central Library in danger

We recently read the following on IFLA-L:

"Last Saturday, news began to spread that the Mosul Central Library had likely been bombed. It was followed on Thursday by video that showed the methodical destruction of the Mosul Museum and news that bookshops on Al-Nujaifi Street in downtown Mosul may have been burned.

"Although the apparent library bombing took place a week ago, it's still unclear exactly what happened in Iraq's second-largest city. That's because Mosul has been largely cut off from the rest of the world since the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) took control of the area in June. Instead of reliable news reports, we have brief phone calls, amateur ISIL documentaries, camera photos of burning books, and intermittent tweets that both illuminate and confuse what's going on...

"The Mosul Central Library, founded in 1921, came to be known as one of the richest libraries in Iraq, second only to the central library in Baghdad."

Read on: "ISIL torches Iraqi history in Mosul," Marcia Lynx Qualey, Al Jayeera, 27 February 2015