In the recaptured city of Sinjar, residents say destruction by ISIS 'can't be reversed'

A peshmerga soldier walks by rubble in Sinjar, Iraq.
(Image credit: John Moore/Getty Images)

The city of Sinjar, Iraq, has been reclaimed from the Islamic State, but former residents say it will never be the same.

On Friday, Kurdish fighters liberated Sinjar, which the United Nations estimates was home to 350,000 people before ISIS took over the town in August 2014; two-thirds belonged to the Yazidi religious minority, and most of the rest were Muslim. The Kurdish and allied forces found homes and buildings decimated, a mass grave filled with the bodies of elderly women and men, and the minaret, a symbol of the city, destroyed. "The city will be rebuilt again, but life in the city will not be back," Yazidi fighter Marwan Hussein Ali told The Wall Street Journal. "What was done to us is something that can't be reversed."

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Catherine Garcia, The Week US

Catherine Garcia is night editor for TheWeek.com. Her writing and reporting has appeared in Entertainment Weekly and EW.com, The New York Times, The Book of Jezebel, and other publications. A Southern California native, Catherine is a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.