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Photo: Felipe Dana, Associated Press

The devastation from the battle to retake Mosul from Islamic State militants is underscored in an image from Tuesday. The nearly nine-month fight culminated in a crescendo of destruction.

The devastation from the battle to retake Mosul from Islamic State militants is underscored in an image from Tuesday. The nearly nine-month fight culminated in a crescendo of destruction.

After defeat of militants, a grim search for bodies in Iraq

MOSUL, Iraq The streets of Mosuls Old City are littered with bodies, tangled between shattered stones and remnants of the lives they left behind.

In the baking summer heat, exhausted rescue crews are now sifting through the debris of the toughest battle against the Islamic State group in what became its final redoubt in the city.

As Iraqi ground troops, U.S.-led coalition jets and Islamic State militants pulverized the Old Citys winding maze of streets, thousands of civilians were caught in the crossfire.

But the area is now deserted. Its inhabitants evacuated to houses, camps or prison cells across the province in recent months.

A week after Iraqi officials declared victory in Mosul, all that remains in the Old City is rubble and unknown hundreds of bodies.

Aid groups say that thousands of civilians were killed in the nine-month offensive. A final death toll is unlikely to ever be known, robbing families of answers and a grave for their grief.

Across western Mosul, hundreds of families are still waiting for news. Others know exactly where their loved ones were killed but are still unable to reach them.

On Friday, Sumaya Sarhan, 48, waited in the rescue workers sun-parched yard for her brothers remains, three months after the air strike that killed him.

We lived opposite and tried so many times to get him out. But it was too dangerous, there was too much fighting. Today, I finally saw him pulled from the rubble.

The task of cutting bodies from their homes in this, the most devastated swath of the city, has fallen to a 25-man civil defense unit with one bulldozer, a forklift truck and a single vehicle to carry the corpses.

They have found hundreds of people suffocated under the ruins of their homes. Then, there are those the Islamic State shot as they tried to flee, their bodies left to rot as a message to anyone else who might attempt to escape.

Mosuls Old City had more than 5,000 buildings, many of them high-ceilinged houses built around courtyards. Almost a third were damaged or destroyed during the final three weeks of fighting, according to the United Nations.

Across the entire city, which had a population of almost 2 million before the Islamic State arrived, satellite imagery shows battle scars or total destruction across more than 10,000 buildings. Although life has returned to the relatively less damaged eastern districts, the infrastructure in the west has been devastated.

Louisa Loveluck is a Washington Post writer.

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After defeat of militants, a grim search for bodies in Iraq - SFGate