ABU DHABI, February 23. /TASS/. The militants of the Islamic State (IS) extremist group have blown up a central library in Iraq’s second city Mosul, some 400 kilometers northwest of Baghdad, the Elaph online newspaper has reported.

Mosul has been under control of the IS armed formations since July last year.

The director of the library said the explosion resulted in a massive fire that engulfed all the rooms of three-floor building. In the yard of the library, which is one of the oldest in the country, the gunmen made a fire out of books that are part of Iraq’s cultural heritage.

Nearly 10,000 books were destroyed, including rare works related to culture, philosophy, the Arab history and hundreds of manuscripts.

Eyewitnesses say the IS militants destroy the libraries across the territory they control on purpose. Over the recent weeks, several libraries have been destroyed which had more than 100,000 books.