Returning to the rubble of Mosul

Families that fled ISIS are returning to their liberated home — and finding it unrecognizable

Mosul, Iraq.
(Image credit: The Associated Press)
Kelly Gonsalves
By Kelly Gonsalves
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(Image credit: (AP Photo/Felipe Dana)Over the course of the three-year occupation, ISIS turned the city into a fortress, rigging houses and roads with explosives, using hospitals and schools as military bas)

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(Image credit: The Associated Press)

(AP Photo/Felipe Dana)Nearly a third of the Old City is damaged or destroyed, and a large majority of western Mosul has been reduced to rubble, with bodies still buried underneath."Thousands of Mosul families have been left without a home," The Associated Press reports. "Schools have been leveled, utility grids wrecked, highways pounded into broken dirt roads."As of July, about 90 percent of the 176,000 east Mosul residents who left have since returned — compared to fewer than one tenth of the 730,000 people displaced from the west."Many of the people who have fled have lost everything. They need shelter, food, health care, water, sanitation, and emergency kits," a United Nations representative told UPI. "The levels of trauma we are seeing are some of the highest anywhere. What people have experienced is nearly unimaginable. ... The fighting may be over, but the humanitarian crisis is not."

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(Image credit: (AP Photo/Felipe Dana)The prime minister has promised the rebuilding process will begin soon, but the national government lacks funds for even basic daily operations due to low oil prices. Mo)

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(Image credit: The Associated Press)

(AP Photo/Felipe Dana)

Kelly Gonsalves
Kelly Gonsalves

Kelly Gonsalves is a sex and culture writer exploring love, lust, identity, and feminism. Her work has appeared at Bustle, Cosmopolitan, Marie Claire, and more, and she previously worked as an associate editor for The Week. She's obsessed with badass ladies doing badass things, wellness movements, and very bad rom-coms.

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