Hundreds of vehicles on Wednesday pushed into Mosul's rubble-strewn streets to begin a massive clean up campaign, nearly a year after Islamic State group jihadists were pushed out of their "capital" in Iraq.

Largely silent since Iraqi forces fully recaptured the city on July 10, Mosul's Old City awoke to the roar of trucks, bulldozers and excavators chugging though its debris-filled neighbourhoods.

"More than 300 transport cars and trucks took part" in the first day of the campaign to clear the Old City, said Jamal Sellu, director of engineering in Iraq's northern Nineveh province -- of which Mosul is the capital.

"This is the first of its kind and there are more than 10 million tonnes of debris," he added.

Some of the ancient city's most narrow streets will have to be cleared by hand.

Clean-up efforts have been delayed a year because there's been no financial aid from Baghdad, the engineer said.

"All participants in this campaign are working in hopes they'll be paid when the funds arrive."

The UN estimates it will take "years" to clear the debris from Mosul.

In November 2017, Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi estimated it would cost more than $100 billion to repair the damage caused during the three-year jihadist occupation of the city.

According to Nineveh governor Sultan Nawfal al-Akub, the clean-up operation will continue until Mosul's displaced return to their homes.

"We don't want these ruins anymore. We want water and electricity and to rebuild our homes," said Sabah Mahmud, 53-year-old who still has not returned home to Mosul.

As of October there were 700,000 Iraqis from in and around Mosul still displaced, according to the Norwegian Refugee Council.

Iraq army finds bodies of recent IS prisoners
Baghdad (AFP) June 27, 2018 - The Iraqi army said Wednesday it has found the bodies of eight people along a highway linking Baghdad with Kirkuk, including six who had been abducted by the Islamic State group.

The corpses found at Tel Sharaf in Salaheddin province were "decomposing and had been strapped with explosive vests", said General Mezher al-Azzawi, a commander of operations in the area.

They included "the abductees who appeared in Daesh's last video", he added, using an Arabic acronym to refer to the jihadist group.

On Saturday, IS threatened to execute captives if Baghdad did not release Sunni Muslim women held in its prisons within three days.

In a video posted to the group's Amaq propaganda outlet, the jihadists displayed six men with badly bruised faces they said were Iraqi police or members of the Hashed al-Shaabi paramilitary force.

The corpses were transported to Tuz Khuramtu hospital south of Kirkuk, a Salaheddin policeman said.

Iraq declared victory over IS in December after expelling the jihadists from all urban centres following a vast military campaign.

It has detained hundreds of women and children identified as jihadists or related to suspected IS fighters and has put many on trial.

More than 300 people -- including some 100 foreign women -- have been sentenced to death in Iraq for joining IS, while similar numbers have been handed life terms, judicial sources say.

Most of the convicted women are Turkish or from the former Soviet republics.

Related Links
Iraq: The first technology war of the 21st century

Tweet

Iraq says it killed 45 IS jihadists in Syria strike
Baghdad (AFP) June 23, 2018
Iraq said Saturday it had killed 45 jihadists from the Islamic State group, including senior members, in an air strike in eastern Syria, the second such operation in less than a month. Iraqi F-16 fighter jets carried out a "successful strike targeting a meeting of Daesh (IS) leaders" on Friday in the Hajin region, in the eastern Syrian province of Deir Ezzor, a military statement said. Among those killed, it said, were a senior member of the jihadists' "ministry of war", his deputy, a local comm ... read more