When all that's left is rubble: Iraqi families displaced by months of fighting between government forces and Islamic State group militants are returning to Mosul to find their homes destroyed.
ADVERTISEMENTIraqi families displaced by months of fighting between government forces and Islamic State (ISIL) group militants are returning to Mosul to find their homes destroyed.
For three years, the city’s historic centre was the heart of ISIL’s self-proclaimed caliphate. Now, most of it lies in rubble.
The Iraq Reconstruction Fund estimates that 80 percent of Mosul’s buildings and roads have been destroyed in the nearly nine-month battle to reclaim the city.
As ISIL militants used many explosives in the residential areas of Mosul, infrastructure in these neighbourhoods has been severely damaged and losses could total around 50 billion U.S. dollars, according to the Iraqi government.
Karam Talal Ibrahim, a resident of West Mosul, told Sky News he paid a bulldozer to clear up his home because it was filled with rubbish and dead bodies.
Another resident said ISIL militants were still hiding among the rubble.
At the city’s general hospital, the International Red Cross has been treating thousands of people, including wounded children, some very young.
Six-year old Ghalid Khalaf says he got a bullet from a machine gun. And now he wants to fight and go to war.
Almost one million people fled Mosul during the fighting. So far, a quarter of them have returned to their homes.