United Nations: 3,000 sites and a destructive cultural teacher in Mosul

by **RamblerNash** Fri May 19, 2017 12:26 am

United Nations: 3,000 sites and a destructive cultural teacher in Mosul

MAY 18, 2017

The head of the United Nations Human Settlements Program in Iraq, Irfan Ali, said Thursday that 3,000 sites and cultural teachers were destroyed in the northern city of Mosul by the Islamic state's control over the city and the liberation battles.

He also stressed the need to start planning special urban planning plans for the city in order to initiate the process of rehabilitation and reconstruction.

Ali told Anatolia, on the sidelines of a seminar organized by the United Nations in Baghdad, especially the urban planning of the city of Mosul, that their office "monitoring 3 thousand sites and a cultural teacher in Mosul destroyed because of the control of the organization on the city," adding that "the western side of the city of Mosul witnessed a greater destruction than East side of the city ". "The UN program has focused on the need for urban planning for the city of Mosul in order to restore recovery in preparation for reconstruction, because the previous urban planning ended years ago and there is a need to develop a new planning for the city."

"The development of new urban planning and rehabilitation faces major challenges, most notably financial resources as the process requires large sums of money and mechanisms and institutions working on rehabilitation." "The United Nations is making great efforts in Iraq to rehabilitate the liberated areas, including the city of Ramadi, which has witnessed extensive destruction and now we are working on rehabilitation, stability and reconstruction through United Nations agencies," he said.

Since October 2016, Iraqi forces have launched a massive military operation to expel the "Islamic State" from Mosul, the last major stronghold of the organization in Iraq. The troops recovered in the eastern half of the city in January and have been fighting since February to wrest the western half, which has freed about 90 percent of its territory.

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