Street turned to rubble shows cost of fight for Iraq’s Mosul

For the few residents who remain in Mosul’s Wadi Hajar neighbourhood, the war is far from over. Just blocks away, police units fired mortars at IS positions and helicopters circled overhead, firing into the streets below. IS returned fire only sporadically, the treacherous calm luring the residents into the street between the crashes of mortars.

Iraqi forces backed by U.S.-led coalition airstrikes launched their assault on western Mosul in mid-February after taking the eastern sector of the city in more than three months of heavy fighting. While nearly two months of house-to-house battles have flushed the militants out of parts of the city’s western sector, fighting rages nearby.

Food remains a problem. Few aid trucks reach the area and food distribution can descend into chaos. Among those who managed to grab a parcel at a recent distribution was Firas Mohammed al-Jibouri. Taking it home with his young son, he opened it in his living room to find a packet of baby milk, bulgur and two bottles of oil. There was also some sugar and wheat.

“It’s just enough for one day. We are 25 people here — 25. Just one day,” he said, looking forlornly at the small pile of provisions.

A former truck driver, Jibouri has lost his livelihood: His house is one of the two still standing but his truck is gone. Any vehicles that survived the airstrikes were used for barricades or destroyed by advancing Iraqi forces fearful of car bombs.

Out in the street, Jibouri pointed at individual piles of rubble and recalled those who were killed there, many of them members of his extended family. One pile used to be the Khaled Ibn al-Waleed mosque, the centerpiece of the neighbourhood. Jibouri said 43 people were killed there two months ago when it was hit by back-to-back airstrikes, the second striking as people were trying to dig out the victims of the first.

Surrounding one of the damaged trucks, a group of men and boys worked to remove a valuable intact wheel. One child rolled it away, and it wobbled away from him into a puddle of mud. As he struggled to lift it, a man and his young daughter sat silently in front of their house.

Mahmoud Alo said the only thing he hears from his daughter, Amna, these days is a brief yes or no. Clearly traumatized by the violence around her, she has been sleeping little and spends her days staring into space. As gunfire reverberated nearby, drowning out her father’s words, Amna looked around nervously at a helicopter rocketing an IS position.

“Whatever you ask her, she just says ‘No.’ Come — she doesn’t come. Bring this — she doesn’t understand,” her father said.

He took her to a makeshift clinic, but the only thing the medics could do was give them some tranquillizers. With no immediate hope of further treatment and the war still raging around her, Amna sits sedated, and just stares.

At the other end of the street, al-Jibouri finished recounting all the death and destruction that has visited his neighbourhood, trying to measure the cost of his new-found freedom from IS.

“It’s a tragedy,” he concluded.

Mstyslav Chernov And Felipe Dana, The Associated Press

by Canadian Press

Street turned to rubble shows cost of fight for Iraq’s Mosul

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