Nearly a year after Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi declared the war-devastated city of Mosul liberated from ISIS, a putrid odor still fills the air from thousands of corpses left in the rubble, USA today reported on Wednesday.The bodies of both civilians and ISIS terrorists can be found throughout Mosul, once Iraq's second-largest city, abandoned in bombed-out buildings, tossed in roadside rubbish heaps or discarded in and around the Tigris River.“The sight and smell of these corpses is a constant reminder of our darkest days,” said Ayoub Thanoun, 26, a pharmacy assistant who now helps neighbors clear debris.“A large number of bodies are scattered in the houses, gardens, squares and even in some of our mosques.”Ahead of the May 12 parliamentary elections. candidates here plant their campaign banners atop piles of brick and stones, most from ancient buildings now destroyed.“The politicians are holding electioneering feasts on top of the bodies,” said Shihab Ahmed, 28, who lives in the Bab Lagash district, where most working-age males were tombstone engravers before ISIS invaded the city in June 2014.About 100,000 people once lived in Mosul’s 1-square-mile Old City before ISIS also known as ISIS, occupied the neighborhood. The United Nations estimates that more than 90% of the district was demolished in the fighting.“I’ve spent my whole life in the Old City. And while there are many historic buildings officials need to preserve and protect, the government should do something to help the volunteers who have been working so hard to clear the corpses out of this neighborhood,” Ahmed said.The task of removing the bodies is dangerous.“Often the bodies of ISIS fighters are just dumped in a place. And when we come to lift and remove them, we find they’re still strapped to explosive vests or there are bombs hidden in the piles of corpses,” said Omar Mohammed, 30, an Old Mosul resident.“We are all vexed with how to deal with the bodies,” said Ma’an Al Jammal, 26, a physician at Nineveh Medical College in Mosul. “The residents themselves are applying some sort of quarantine, but some have been injured from hidden explosives.”The decomposing bodies also present health problems. The World Health Organization determined that those living downstream from the city are at risk of gastroenteritis from partially treated water that had been exposed to the bodies.“We are lucky that the main supply of Mosul’s drinking water from the Tigris is located far north of the city,” Al Jammal said.The United Nations held a workshop here in March with officials and residents to come up with a plan to remove what it estimates to be 8 million tons of "conflict debris." The volume of rubble is equivalent to three massive piles the size of the Great Pyramid of Giza, according to the U.N.“Unplanned disposal of debris can create serious health and environmental risks and burdensome economic liabilities in the future,” said Hassan Partow, a U.N. environment program manager working with the Mosul municipality to develop a strategy for rubble clearance.Sroor Al-Hosayni, 23, a nurse in Mosul, isn’t waiting for the government to remove the bodies left on the ground and inside demolished homes in her neighborhood. She led her team of 30 volunteers to pull out the dead from the dirt and debris and place them in white plastic sacks.“We gathered 52 bodies here and then the municipality takes them to be dumped,” Al-Hosayni said in a phone interview April 19, after spending the day retrieving the dead from a district in the Old City that saw some of the fiercest battles between government troops and ISIS militants.Al-Hosayni’s mission began after her 14-year-old sister Nibras was killed in last year’s fighting. Her father died of a heart attack shortly after an airstrike.“I promised the security forces to work for them as a nurse if they would help me bury my sister,” said Al-Hosayni, who now trains others in safe removal.The training includes the use of protective gear, including gloves and masks, and how to treat scorpion stings, a common hazard when removing bodies from the charred remains of the homes and shops of the ancient city.“The areas smell of death. It’s awful, but we have gotten used to it,” Al-Hosayni said. She said city officials suggested letting stray dogs eat the bodies. “There are lots of rats and cats, but no dogs. I told them there were not enough dogs to eat the corpses. There are thousands of bodies.”The prime minister has said the civilian death toll in Mosul was almost 1,300. But that number was challenged by independent monitoring groups and The Associated Press, which estimated in December that as many as 11,000 civilians died between October 2016 and July 2017.Al-Hosayni and her volunteers have removed 860 bodies so far.“In many ways I’m doing this work in memory of my sister and my father,” Al-Hosayni said. “Dad taught me that actively caring for others is the best answer to the atrocities of ISIS.”