After two and a half years under Islamic State control, all that is left in Mosul's museum are the traces of looting and destruction. "What they didn't loot they destroyed," said Lieutenant Colonel Abdel Amir al-Mohammedawi, of Iraq's elite Rapid Response units, who captured the museum building from Islamic State just days ago. In July 2015, US authorities handed Iraq a hoard of antiquities it said it had seized from Islamic State in Syria. A US-backed Iraqi campaign dislodged Islamic State from most Iraqi cities captured in 2014 and 2015. The body of an Islamic State fighter lay just outside the church on Saturday, days after the fighting had moved further forward.

Source: Otago Daily Times March 12, 2017 02:48 UTC