AP Photo A resident of Fallujah clears debris at his home after it was bombed.

BAGHDAD — Past the blast walls of the Green Zone in central Baghdad, in the lobby of a mostly empty hotel, Liqaa Wardi, an MP from the city of Fallujah, swiped through photos of corpses on her iPad. She got them from the director of Fallujah's main hospital, she said, and they showed the mangled victims of government shelling and air strikes. "This is one family," she said. "This is a baby. And this is a boy, I think. These are two children. And these are of the city — and how they destroy it." Fallujah fell to Sunni militants in January, shaking Iraq even before extremists overran its second city of Mosul last month. The Iraqi military has been pounding Fallujah since — hitting insurgents, but also wreaking havoc on residents. "The victims are usually civilians," Wardi said. U.S. forces paid dearly to secure Fallujah and the surrounding Anbar province during the Iraq War. Their main enemy then was al-Qaeda — and the militants who run the city now include the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or ISIS, the al-Qaeda offshoot that led the Mosul offensive and declared an Islamic caliphate on Sunday. Though it received little global attention, unrest in Fallujah, a primarily Sunni city, began in late 2012 with protests against the hardline policies of Nouri al-Maliki, the Shiite prime minister. Like many residents, Wardi sees the military campaign, which began in January, as retribution. "This started under the banner of fighting terrorists but changed to attacking the city," she said. "It's punishment for the people." Fallujah is difficult to access, and many accounts of the bloodshed, like the photos in Wardi's iPad, can't be verified. But accounts from Fallujah — from human rights groups, press reports and fleeing residents — paint a picture of a city under siege. They describe government artillery fire raining down on the city, targeting even the hospital, as Human Rights Watch documented in May. Army helicopters have also used barrel bombs — crude and inexact explosives that level surrounding homes along with intended targets when they fall from the sky. "They're completely indiscriminate — if not actively targeting Sunni civilians," Erin Evers, the Human Rights Watch researcher in Iraq, said of the government's military campaign in Fallujah and elsewhere in Anbar, such as the city of Ramadi, which has seen a similar cycle of protests and violence. All this comes in addition to the violence inflicted by the militants.

AP Photo ISIS militants celebrate the group's declaration of an Islamic state in Fallujah.

There are signs that in Anbar, Maliki has adopted a strategy similar to his ally across the border in Syria, Bashar al-Assad — and that he may apply it to the growing swath of territory under militant control. Like Assad, Maliki has become increasingly sectarian as a Sunni insurgency infused with extremists threatens his regime. He has also turned to Shiite militias to shore up his fading military. And like Assad, he has used airstrikes to pummel areas where the government has lost control. "I think that the Syrian scenario will repeat in Mosul," said Intisar al-Juburi, an MP from Nineveh province. She said militants were using civilians as human shields. "I heard a lot of talk from Maliki about buying new aircraft and weapons to destroy ISIS. But I didn't hear about any plans to lure ISIS away from civilians first, or a special military strategy to kill just ISIS. There is only a very strong idea to attack in an indiscriminate way — which means civilians will pay the price." Civilian casualties — and the general brutality — are on a far smaller scale in Iraq than in Syria. But Iraqi Sunnis and independent analysts alike increasingly see shades of Assad in Maliki's war. Wardi cites the barrel bombs as the clearest example; the Syrian regime has also used them to devastating effect. "It's very clear that what happened in Syria is starting to happen in Fallujah," said an official with the hospital in the city, who requested anonymity for safety concerns. He gave the number of casualties from government strikes in the city since January as 1,764 wounded and another 511 killed, including 53 women and 82 children. The official said casualties would spike as displaced residents returned home, now that Sunni cities where many had taken shelter, such as Samarra and Tikrit, have been consumed by fighting as well. Asked how many of the casualties were militants, he said he didn't know. "The difference between a civilian and a militant is only the mask the militants wear," he said. "Just lift the mask, and you cannot distinguish between the two." The government says it is fighting terrorists and has accused Anbar residents of harboring ISIS. The ultra-violent militant group indeed poses a grave threat — to Iraq as well as the wider world. But even some Sunni soldiers who were dedicated to fighting ISIS question what they see as an increasingly reckless and sectarian-tinged military campaign.

Mohammed Sawaf/AFP / Getty Images An Iraqi soldier monitors a street west of the shrine city of Karbala, 55 miles southwest of Baghdad.