1,900 bodies pulled from rubble in Mosul: Iraq official

By Serhad Shaker

MOSUL, Iraq

Around 1,900 bodies have been pulled from the rubble in the northern city of Mosul following Iraq’s three-year conflict (2014-2017) with the Daesh terrorist group, a local civil-defense official said Wednesday.

"Civil-defense teams have so far recovered some 1,900 bodies found under the rubble of destroyed buildings in Mosul's Old City district," Fahed al-Abed, a civil-defense official in Iraq’s Nineveh province (of which Mosul is provincial capital), told Anadolu Agency.

In May, Nineveh’s civil-defense directorate began combing the rubble of Mosul -- once a Daesh stronghold -- in an effort to recover the bodies of civilians and slain Daesh fighters.

According to al-Abed, most of the recovered bodies are those of unidentified militants.

"There are also many bodies of women and children believed to have been the families of Daesh members," he added, without explaining how he had reached this assumption.

According to various media reports, thousands of civilians in Mosul were killed during the conflict with Daesh by intense airstrikes carried out by a U.S.-led coalition cobbled together in 2014 to fight the terrorist group.

After the Iraqi army (with the coalition’s help) captured Mosul late last year, officials in Baghdad declared Daesh's military presence in the country all but neutralized.

The group nevertheless appears to maintain a limited presence in certain parts of the country.