Inside the booby-trapped Isis "House of Horrors" in Iraq
Telegraph, 09 Dec 2020
The Telegraph's Colin Freeman visits the house in Iraq where bomb clearance experts practise their skills.
The building is part of a training school for those tasked with defusing the vast numbers of booby-traps left by Islamic State in its former strongholds.
Here, death lurks not just round every corner, but under the carpets, behind the bathroom sink, in bedroom cupboards - and yes, in what looked like a pot of mouldy risotto.
"Cooking pots are an Isis favourite, but basically any container that can hold explosives can be used as a booby trap," explains Karl Greenwood, an ex-Army bomb disposal expert from the Mines Advisory Group, a British mine clearance charity.
"If that had gone off in real life, it would have ruined your day rather."
The charity faces a daunting task in Iraq, where IS planted booby traps and IEDs - improvised explosive devices - in tens of thousands of houses and public buildings. In 2017 alone, the last year for which figures are available, they killed 161 people - many of them civilians who had fled Isis's rule and were returning home for the first time.
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The building is part of a training school for those tasked with defusing the vast numbers of booby-traps left by Islamic State in its former strongholds.
Here, death lurks not just round every corner, but under the carpets, behind the bathroom sink, in bedroom cupboards - and yes, in what looked like a pot of mouldy risotto.
"Cooking pots are an Isis favourite, but basically any container that can hold explosives can be used as a booby trap," explains Karl Greenwood, an ex-Army bomb disposal expert from the Mines Advisory Group, a British mine clearance charity.
"If that had gone off in real life, it would have ruined your day rather."
The charity faces a daunting task in Iraq, where IS planted booby traps and IEDs - improvised explosive devices - in tens of thousands of houses and public buildings. In 2017 alone, the last year for which figures are available, they killed 161 people - many of them civilians who had fled Isis's rule and were returning home for the first time.
Subscribe to The Telegraph on YouTube ► https://bit.ly/3idrdLH
Get the latest headlines: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/
Telegraph.co.uk and YouTube.com/TelegraphTV are websites of The Telegraph, the UK's best-selling quality daily newspaper providing news and analysis on UK and world events, business, sport, lifestyle and culture.
