© Reuters/Khalid al-Mousily
A Woman walks next to ruins in the Old City of Mosul.
- that's what life in Mosul is like more than 1.5 years after Iraqi forces and the US-led coalition staged one of the deadliest battles in decades to liberate the city from Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS).
A year and a half since its "liberation" by the US-backed Iraqi forces, the city still lies in ruins. Nine hospitals out of 13 in Mosul are still damaged or destroyed and are unable to lend any kind of medical assistance, while
4 million tons of rubble scattered around the city still need to be cleared, Tom Peyre-Costa, a Norwegian refugee center media coordinator, who saw the situation on the ground firsthand, told RT.
What was once Iraq's second-largest city and home to millions was reduced to ash in July 2017, when the
US-led coalition dropped bombs and recaptured it from IS. More than 10,000 civilians are estimated to have been killed in the battle.
Thousands of dead bodies are still buried under the rubble amid the lack of recovery crews and equipment.
"Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis are still displaced... and are unable to return to their homes for the simple reason that they do not have a home to go back to," Peyre-Costa said. His words were confirmed by locals, who complained about the lack of basic infrastructure. A Mosul resident told RT:
"You can't even imagine how difficult it is - no hospitals, no schools, no teachers. We are like the living dead. We have a cemetery over there, but here it's a cemetery for the living. Pot holes are everywhere, there are still corpses everywhere and if anyone brings humanitarian aid here, the local officials just steal it, they are all corrupt. There's no reconstruction here, all their reconstruction efforts are just ink on paper."
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