Abu Ghazi stood smoking a cigarette outside what used to be his home in Mosul’s Old City, where only the sound of the footsteps of a few soldiers on patrol and twisted pieces of metal and fabric flapping in the wind disturb the eery silence.
“They should just bulldoze the whole thing and start over,” he said, gazing at the rows of collapsed buildings with their contents strewn across the upturned streets.
“There’s no saving it now, not like this.”
Hundreds of yards away on Wednesday Federal Police shot an Islamic State fighter as he emerged firing his gun from an underground tunnel on Makkawi Street.
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