MOSUL: Amid buildings destroyed by heavy fighting, University of Mosul students are returning to take exams interrupted three years ago when jihadists took control of their city.
The university and an army of volunteers are working to clear up rubble and repair the damage left by fierce battles between Iraqi forces and Daesh militants.
“The fact that I am here with my friends today shows our determination and our will to resist,” says Ahmad Chehab Ahmad, 23.
Around 40,000 students were studying at the university, one of the biggest in Iraq, when Daesh seized the city in a sweeping summer 2014 offensive across Iraq and Syria.
Elite Counter-Terrorism Service forces seized the campus back in January as part of a months-long operation to oust the jihadists from the capital of their self-declared “caliphate.”
“Less than a month after we were liberated I was back in class,” says Sanaa Nafih, minutes before going in for her English exam.
“I feel good, despite all the destruction I see,” says the 21-year-old, who hopes to finish her studies and become a teacher.
With Iraqi forces still fighting jihadists across town in Mosul’s old city, security at the university is tight.
Heavily armed guards check ID cards and search students at the campus entrance.
The signs of fighting are clear — some buildings have been completely demolished, while others are pock-marked by shelling and small arms fire.
While the science department remains closed, humanities students have returned after years without setting foot in a lecture hall.
“We girls stayed at home” under Daesh rule, says Nafih.
“In the beginning we had electricity and we could receive news — I could use the Internet to download books.”
“But after a few months the Internet was cut off and a period of darkness began,” she says. “People could only imagine what was happening in the world.”
Part of the university continued to operate under Daesh control, mostly serving the relatives of Daesh fighters, according to a staff member who worked there at the time and asked to remain anonymous.
Before they fled the campus, the jihadists set fire to the university library, turning the large building into a blackened shell.
“Daesh destroyed hundreds of thousands of books, valuable encyclopedias and rare manuscripts,” says university employee Zaid Muhieddine, using an Arabic acronym for the group.
“The first time I saw the library in this state, I broke down in tears.”
But for Maher, a third-year geography student, life must go on.
“As long as there are classes, it doesn’t matter so much that the buildings are burned or destroyed,” he says.
The university’s management hopes to have courses up and running as normal by October.
In the meantime, it is trying to catch up on exams.
“The clean-up has been finished in most faculties, thanks to volunteering by the city’s youth — both university and school students,” says Osama Hamdun of the university’s maintenance department.
“In four months they removed thousands of tons of rubble and remnants of the fighting.”
Re-opening the university is a “message to the world,” he adds.
“Mosul is a city of civilization. Neither Daesh nor anyone else can break the will of Mosul’s people to live,” he says.
Mosul students return for exams amid devastation
Mosul students return for exams amid devastation
Israel military says three projectiles fired from north Gaza
JERUSALEM: The Israeli military said it identified three projectiles fired from the northern Gaza Strip that crossed into Israel on Monday, the latest in a series of launches from the war-ravaged Palestinian territory.
“One projectile was intercepted by the IAF (air force), one fell in Sderot and another projectile fell in an open area. No injuries were reported,” the military said in a statement.
Sudan army air strike kills 10 in southern Khartoum: rescuers
- Strike targeted a market area of the capital’s Southern Belt ‘for the third time in less than a month’
- War between Sudan’s regular army and the paramilitary forces has killed tens of thousands of people
PORT SUDAN, Sudan: Ten Sudanese civilians were killed and over 30 wounded in an army air strike on southern Khartoum, volunteer rescue workers said.
The strike on Sunday targeted a market area of the capital’s Southern Belt “for the third time in less than a month,” said the local Emergency Response Room (ERR), part of a network of volunteers across the country coordinating frontline aid.
The group said those killed burned to death. The wounded, suffering from burns, were taken to the local Bashair Hospital, with five of them in a critical condition.
Since April 2023, the war between Sudan’s regular army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) has killed tens of thousands of people.
In the capital alone, the violence killed 26,000 people between April 2023 and June 2024, according to a report by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
Khartoum has experienced some of the war’s worst violence, with entire neighborhoods emptied out and taken over by fighters.
The military, which maintains a monopoly on the skies with its jets, has not managed to wrest back control of the capital from the paramilitary.
Of the 11.5 million people currently displaced within Sudan, nearly a third have fled from the capital, according to United Nations figures.
Both the RSF and the army have been repeatedly accused of targeting civilians and indiscriminately shelling residential areas.
Israel says Hamas has not given ‘status of hostages’ it says ready to free
- A Hamas official gave a list of 34 hostages the group was ready to free
JERUSALEM: Israel said on Monday that Hamas had so far not provided the status of the 34 hostages the group declared it was ready to release in the first phase of a potential exchange deal.
“As yet, Israel has not received any confirmation or comment by Hamas regarding the status of the hostages appearing on the list,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said in a statement after a Hamas official gave a list of 34 hostages the group was ready to free in the first phase.
Shooting attack on a bus carrying Israelis in the occupied West Bank kills 3
- The attack occurred in the Palestinian village of Al-Funduq, on one of the main east-west roads crossing the territory
JERUSALEM: A shooting attack on a bus carrying Israelis in the occupied West Bank killed at least three people and wounded seven others on Monday, Israeli medics said.
Israel’s Magen David Adom rescue service said those killed included two women in their 60s and a man in his 40s.
Violence has surged in the West Bank since Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023 attack out of Gaza ignited the ongoing war there.
The attack occurred in the Palestinian village of Al-Funduq, on one of the main east-west roads crossing the territory. The identities of the attackers and those killed were not immediately known. The military said it was looking for the attackers, who fled.
Palestinians have carried out scores of shooting, stabbing and car-ramming attacks against Israelis in recent years. Israel has launched near-nightly military raids across the territory that frequently trigger gunbattle with militants.
The Palestinian Health Ministry says at least 835 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli fire in the West Bank since the start of the war in Gaza.
Israel captured the West Bank, Gaza and east Jerusalem in the 1967 Mideast war, and the Palestinians want all three territories for their future state.
Some 3 million Palestinians live in the West Bank under seemingly open-ended Israeli military rule, with the internationally recognized Palestinian Authority administering population centers. Over 500,000 Israeli settlers live in scores of settlements, which most of the international community considers illegal.
Meanwhile, the war in Gaza is raging with no end in sight, though there has reportedly been recent progress in long-running talks aimed at a ceasefire and hostage release.
The war began when Hamas-led militants stormed across the border in a massive surprise attack nearly 15 months ago, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducting around 250. Some 100 hostages are still inside Gaza, at least a third of whom are believed to be dead.
Israel’s air and ground offensive has killed over 45,800 Palestinians in Gaza, according to local health authorities, who say women and children make up more than half of those killed. They do not say how many of the dead were militants. The Israeli military says it has killed over 17,000 fighters, without providing evidence.
The war has destroyed vast areas of Gaza and displaced 90 percent of the territory’s population of 2.3 million, often multiple times. Hundreds of thousands are enduring a cold, rainy winter in tent camps along the windy coast. At least seven infants have died of hypothermia because of the harsh conditions, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry.
Aid groups say Israeli restrictions, ongoing fighting and the breakdown of law and order in many areas make it difficult to provide desperately needed food and other assistance.
