(28 Oct 2016) Abdel el Razak Talab regularly visited his brother's grave in the Iraqi town of Qaraya while it was under the control of the Islamic State group (IS).
He still visits now but his brother's grave, like so many others, is marked by a broken tombstone.
When the IS group first overran Qayara more than two years ago, they began destroying headstones at a graveyard to the east of the town, telling residents they were forbidden because they did not exist at the time of the prophet.
Razak Talab said the extremists recruited him to drive prisoners to the graveyard to destroy the stones.
"They (Islamic State group fighters) brought everybody that was imprisoned, whether it was for smoking or shaving or wearing illegal clothes. And they punished them by bringing them here to destroy the stones," he told The Associated Press.
Smoke billows across the graveyard from the nearby burning oil fields, high above the heads of mourning relatives gathered amid the broken tombstones.
Ahmed Abdullah Khalaf, visiting his grandmother's grave, said local residents wanted to fight the IS group but "were weak under their flag".
The fight to push the IS group out of Iraqi territory in the country's north and west has left massive destruction in it's wake from critical pieces of infrastructure to family homes and heirlooms.
On 17 October, Iraq formally launched an operation to retake the group's last urban stronghold in Iraq, the country's second largest city of Mosul, a fight that is expected to be the most complex yet against the militant group.
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