Hunt for bodies goes on in Mosul
Ten months after dislodging IS, fire crew still looking for the dead, despite the stench.
MOSUL: Atop an enormous mound of rubble under blistering sun in Iraq’s second city Mosul, fire crews and police chip away at a grim but vital task.
Some 10 months after dislodging the Islamic State group, they are still extracting bodies from the ruins of the shattered Old City.
“Over three days, 763 bodies have been pulled from the rubble and buried,” Lieutenant Colonel Rabie Ibrahim said.
Despite the overpowering stench, the men work relentlessly, braving unexploded munitions in an area devastated by the nine-month battle.
“The operations will continue until all the corpses are extracted” from the heart of the city, Ibrahim says.
Civilians’ bodies that can be identified are handed to their families,
while the remains of IS combatants are buried in a mass grave on the western outskirts of Mosul.
Some of the putrefied corpses are sent to Nineveh province’s health services, Ibrahim adds.
The workers, their faces covered with masks or scarves, move with great caution.
The bodies of militants are sometimes still clad in suicide belts. Grenades, homemade bombs and other crude contraptions left by IS fighters during their retreat to Syria pose a constant threat.
The improvised booby-traps are hidden under multiple layers of debris and obstacles – the rubble of collapsed homes, disembowelled furniture and uprooted trees, which in some places subside into the waters of the Tigris that meander murkily below.
Where a maze of cobbled streets was once lined with homes and market stalls, there is now a formless mess populated by stray animals, insects and disease.
The destruction is so great that some residents cannot pinpoint the remnants of their homes or even their street as they try to direct salvage workers to the remains of loved ones.
Over three days, 763 bodies have been pulled from the rubble and buried. Lieutenant Colonel Rabie Ibrahim