It is a year since the Iraqi city was liberated, but people are slow to return, reeling from the damage inflicted by their former captors
Beside the sun-bleached bones, the tangles of human hair and greying piles of clothes exposed by wind and rain, a leaflet newly dropped by the Iraqi army fluttered in the wind. We are coming to save you from Isis! the text announced, two years too late for those buried in the mass grave below.
Ten minutes drive away is the ruined city of Sinjar, where whole streets lie in rubble, shop shutters are still branded with the religion of their owners Islamic State marked them so that militants knew where to loot and every tangle of steel and stone could hide an unexploded bomb.
Sinjar and the region around it in northern Iraq, a centre for the minority Yazidi group and symbol of their suffering under Isis, was liberated nearly a year ago. But since then there has been little clearance, no rebuilding, and no formal investigation of the mass graves that have been found although some are now marked by wire fence or tape. There has been no restoration of public services or call for refugees to return.
The whole area still feels ghostly and abandoned, still waiting for life to return nearly a year after Isis left. The only residents are cats, wary soldiers, and a few shopkeepers who serve them. The destruction is so complete that officials are considering leaving the ruins as a monument to their peoples suffering.