Eventually the stench of death was too much even for ISIS. They covered it, mined it. The Iraqi government won’t touch it. The families of the disappeared have no place to turn.
Mosul
21 posts
Iraqi prime minister Haider Al Abadi declared the city of Mosul liberated in July 2017. But that diesn’t mean life has returned to normal for its residents — or for the men who fought to reclaim it from ISIL.
As the Iraqi military slowly pushes into the heart of Mosul, suspected ISIS fighters are summarily executed.
In the ruins of the Old City, residents who escape increasingly desperate militants are then faced with Iraqi troops suspicious of suicide bombers.
With their backs to the wall, ISIS fighters in the city of Mosul are using poison gas to try and hold off Iraqi forces.
The battle to retake Mosul from the so-called Islamic State is far from over. But the liberated zones feel very liberated indeed.
And estimated 400,000 civilians remained in the ancient city centre as Iraqi forces closed in on ISIS in Mosul. Human shields in the hands of a brutal terror group.
As the elite Iraqi forces drive into the ISIS-controlled metropolis, making headlines, their flanks are increasingly exposed.
Iraqi troops make heavy weather of retaking villages en route to first major objective of the campaign to liberate Mosul from ISIS.
As Iraqi forces push into ISIS-held Mosul, desperate civilians are on the run from snipers, booby traps and suicide bombers.
ISIS used a sinkhole outside Mosul to dispose of its victims, a place already used by Saddam Hussein to make people disappear.
As the ‘final offensive’ to retake the western half of the city begins, the underground networks of ISIS continue to attack in the ‘liberated’ eastern half.
With fighting still ongoing on the other side of the river, some semblance of normality is slowly returning to eastern Mosul.
The battle with ISIL for the university had been a harsh lesson for Iraqi troops and although it was won, the war in nearby neighbourhoods continued.
When an elderly man bursts into tears after realising that ISIL’s reign of terror has come to an end in his neighbourhood, one soldier walks up to embrace him, while another offers him a cigarette.
The mosque contained what Muslims and Christians believe was the tomb of Jonah. It also held a shrine said to have contained a tooth from the whale that, according to Islamic, Christian and Jewish scripture, carried Jonah inside it for three days.
As Iraqi forces in Mosul engage in some of the fiercest fighting yet against ISIL, Florian Neuhof takes a look at life inside the Qayyarah Air Field West – a key launching pad as anti-ISIL coalition forces seek to flush the extremists out of their last Iraqi stronghold.
In fight for Iraq’s second city, Iraqi elite forces admit to struggling with IS’s endless supply of mechanised suicide bombers.
Families in liberated parts of Mosul are still exposed to the dangers of war, but fear their suffering will be even worse in the displacement camps which are already beyond capacity.
Once mistrusted, Iraq’s Special Operations Forces have become viewed as heroes for their success in defeating ISIL. Time spent with the Golden Division as they battle to liberate Mosul in their toughest fight yet.