Iraqi fighters battling to oust the Islamic State group from Mosul recaptured the Catholic Mar Behnam monastery on Sunday, allowing its priests to return. (Photo: AFP)
In 2015, IS jihadists posted a video of themselves blowing up the tomb. Today, little remains. It was part of an IS campaign of destruction as it swept across the region. (Photo: AFP)
In 2015, IS jihadists posted a video of themselves blowing up the tomb. Today, little remains. It was part of an IS campaign of destruction as it swept across the region. (Photo: AFP)
The priests fled and most have not returned, while those who came back are pained to see the monastery like this, in such bad condition, demolished. (Photo: AFP)
When they seized it in 2014, the jihadists sacked the monastery, smashing carvings off the wall, decapitating a statue of the Virgin Mary and leaving the building as an empty shell. (Photo: AFP)
Dating back to the fourth century AD, the Syriac Catholic monastery lies just 30 kilometres (20 miles) south of Iraq's second city which became a bastion of the jihadist group after it swept across northern Iraq in 2014. (Photo: AFP)