For nearly two-and-a-half miles along the western bank of the Tigris River, hardly a single building is intact. The warren of narrow streets of Mosul's Old City is a crumpled landscape of broken concrete and metal. Every acre is weighed down by more than 3,000 tons of rubble, much of it laced with explosives and unexploded ordnance.

It will take years to haul away the wreckage, and this is just one corner of the destruction. The Iraqi military and U.S.-led coalition succeeded in uprooting Islamic State across the country, but the cost of victory is nearly incalculable.

Photographs by Ahmad al-Rubaye / AFP - Getty Images

July 10, 2017 and Jan. 10, 2018