IRBIL, Iraq — Dozens of bodies of alleged Islamic State group fighters continue to litter a neighborhood in Mosul’s Old City some eight months after Iraq declared victory over the extremists there.Local authorities lack the resources to dispose of the bodies that lie in the Mosul neighborhood where IS fighters made their last stand against Iraqi forces in the summer of 2017, according to the Nineveh governor’s office.
An Associated Press journalist saw the bodies Wednesday.
Mosul lacks the equipment and money needed to pay salaries to teams of workers, according to Qusey Assaf, the Nineveh governor’s assistant for reconstruction affairs.
“Look, I’m telling you, this is wrong,” said Faris Abdulrazzaq Dhannoon, a senior local official, referring to the bodies left unburied for months.
Dhannoon said there were many more IS fighters than civilians in the Old City neighborhood where the decaying bodies now lie.