LIBERATION has proved dangerous for the residents of Tullaban, a farming hamlet on the outskirts of Mosul. Last autumn, as the push began to wrest the city from Islamic State (IS), villagers returned home to find no sign of the jihadists who had seized it back in 2014. Nor, though, could they spot the booby traps and mines the IS fighters had laid as they fled.
Hidden in the doorways of houses and buried in nearby fields, the villagers only learned of their presence the hard way. “When the IS first came this way, we fled because we knew how they were beheading people,” says Ali Jassem, 80, standing among houses flattened by air strikes and pockmarked with machine gunfire. “Then we came back, and four people were killed while going inside their homes.”
Tullaban, which used to be on IS’s front line, is now being cleared of landmines and booby traps by the Mines Advisory Group, a British charity dedicated to making post-conflict zones safe again. But for all that it still resembles a battlefield, both the hinterland of Mosul and eastern parts of the city itself are seeing life to return to normal in areas freed from IS. It is...Continue reading
Source: Middle East and Africa http://ift.tt/2kMxVfp
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