(17 Apr 2017) On the western side of Mosul, much of the fighting against Islamic State militants takes place between houses so close that they almost touch. Snipers fire from roofs and through holes blasted into outer walls.
An Iraqi police unit walks through the rubble in a badly damaged district of western Mosul. They are tasked with manning the frontline against Islamic State militants near the old city.
Eastern Mosul was taken by Iraq's elite counter-terrorism forces but much of the fighting in this part of the city is done by the heavily militarised federal police force.
This front line near the old city is where police officer Mayser Suleyman Karim marked his 33rd birthday with the rest of his unit.
During a momentary pause in the battle, Mayser recalled that he had joined the force in the aftermath of the mosque bombing in Samarra on February 22, 2006.
That's when suspected al-Qaida militants blew up the al-Askari shrine, one of the holiest in Shiite Islam, starting a wave of sectarian violence in which thousands died.
"It has been a long time now - 10 years. No, 11 years actually. I'm tired," Mayser said apologetically.
"For how long can you keep doing this?" he asked. "Your joints start to hurt, movement is difficult, cannot run. ... It's not about being scared, I'm just getting tired. My body is getting tired."
Part of the police unit's work in western Mosul involves manning checkpoints and interacting with civilians, some of whom remain in the area despite the fighting.
Many police are instinctively wary: They come from distant parts of Iraq, know little of Mosul and suspect that militants or their supporters might have blended into the population. Security forces have been hit by suicide attacks from the militants.
Mayser said he wanted to quit his job but didn't have any options at the moment.
"It's good that I'm not married. But there are guys here who are married and have kids. Their situation is more difficult than mine," he added.
Sectarian tensions are never far from the surface of Iraq's violent politics either, and the federal police is an overwhelmingly Shiite force, while Mosul is a Sunni city.
The police unit sometimes harasses militants by firing mortars at them over the buildings. That's one reason the city has been wrecked so badly.
According to a terrain analysis done by the United Nations, there is about two-and-a-half times more destruction in western Mosul than in the eastern half of the city, and the west has not even been fully taken yet.
Government artillery units pour vast amounts of fire into the parts of the city under IS control.
Airstrikes target snipers, sometimes bringing down several buildings in their hunt for a single militant.
It is hard to be sure how many civilians have been killed or injured in the battle for western Mosul but at least 1,600 cases of trauma have been admitted to Iraqi and Kurdish hospitals since 18 February when the operation was launched.
The U.N. said at least 300 people have been killed, while the Nineveh provincial health department reckons that the real number could be closer to 1,000. At least 1,600 cases of trauma have been admitted to Iraqi and Kurdish hospitals since Feb. 18.
After a day's work, the police unit returned to its base, and the men collapsed onto broken chairs and sofas.
Mayser said the brutality of the war - seeing friends get killed or wounded - had made him stronger. But it has also made him less sensitive to suffering.
"Now I'm ignoring everything that happens, no matter how small or big. Your mother or your father getting ill, things like that, I've seen worse than this," he said.
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