JURF AL SAKHR, IRAQ // A column of grey smoke drifts up from a burning building in Jurf Al Sakhr, south of Baghdad, while the broken roofs of some houses slope down into piles of rubble.
Homes charred black by fires line a narrow dirt road scarred by gaping holes that mark places where buried bombs either exploded or were unearthed by demining teams.
Iraqi leaders including Prime Minister Haider Al Abadi hailed the expulsion of ISIL fighters from Jurf Al Sakhr as a major victory.
But it will take months if not years to restore the area – a sign of the enormous challenges Iraq faces in its battle against ISIL, which has seized significant territory in the country since June.
“This area represented an important location for [ISIL],” Karim Al Nuri, an adviser to Badr militia commander Hadi Al Ameri said in Jurf Al Sakhr.
Badr and other Shiite militias played a key role alongside security forces in the fight to retake Jurf Al Sakhr.
Located between Baghdad and the shrine city of Karbala, the area in ISIL hands was “a real threat”, Mr Nuri said.
While retaking Jurf Al Sakhr lessens the threat to those cities, the area has paid a heavy price with the fighting leaving a trail of destruction and forcing people from their homes.
It is the same story for towns and cities across Iraq as security forces and pro-government fighters drive back the extremist group.
And the damage will disproportionately affect areas such as Jurf Al Sakhr that are populated by Iraq’s minority Sunni Arabs, which may deepen the divide between them and the country’s Shiite majority.
“They hit us with aircraft and mortars and artillery and rockets,” said Abu Ali, a 45-year-old farmer who fled the violence along with his family.
“It became a military area,” he said. “We did not bring anything with us – we escaped with our lives.”
Houses and cars were blown up and orchards uprooted, he said. “There is nothing left.”
Some of the roads were still accessible, but bombs planted by ISIL made other parts impossible to pass.
The burned bodies of three militants lie decomposing in the sun next to the smashed remains of a Humvee armoured vehicle near one bomb-laden stretch of road.
While security forces were deployed in parts of the district, Shiite militiamen made up the bulk of the forces.
In the town of Jurf Al Sakhr, which shares its name with the surrounding area, shops have been smashed in the fighting, windows shattered, metal roofs scarred by shrapnel.
Graffiti covers walls, buildings and even a mosque.
It is not always clear who is responsible for the destruction.
At least some of the fires in the area had been set by militiamen, with one Ketaeb Hezbollah fighter saying that: “We burned those houses belonging to [ISIL].”
Abu Ahmed, a farmer who fled the area, was critical of the militiamen, who are viewed with suspicion by many Sunnis due to their involvement in sectarian violence in past years.
“What did [they] liberate? This militia killed us, bombed us, destroyed our houses,” Abu Ahmed said.
* Agence France-Presse