Mosul, Iraq
Shattered, but liberated: After nine months of brutal, street-by-street fighting, Iraq declared victory this week over ISIS militants in Mosul, where the Islamist group proclaimed the caliphate three years ago. “I announce from here the end and the failure and the collapse of the terrorist state of falsehood and terrorism,” said Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi. While isolated pockets of ISIS resistance remain, Iraq’s second-largest city is now under Iraqi government control. But it has been bombed nearly to rubble, with most of its buildings, including the historic Great Mosque of al-Nuri, completely demolished. The offensive involved a 100,000-strong coalition of Iraqi government units, Kurdish fighters, and Shiite militias, backed by U.S. airstrikes and intelligence. At least 1,000 soldiers and unknown thousands of civilians were killed. An Amnesty International report released this week blamed ISIS for using civilians as human shields, but also said the U.S.-backed coalition had not done enough to prevent civilian deaths during the siege.
The population is now severely traumatized. More than 900,000 people fled the city of 2.5 million and have been living in packed tent camps in sweltering 110-degree heat. Those who remained suffered under ISIS’s rule, as militants took women as sex slaves and enforced a brutally rigid form of sharia law. Public beheadings were common. “The fighting may be over, but the humanitarian crisis is not,” said U.N. humanitarian coordinator Lise Grande. “What people have experienced is nearly unimaginable.” The government said restoring basic services, like water and electricity, could take months.