Alum Bryan Denton (Tisch '05) has another installment of photos and stories from his time with the Iraqi Special Forces in The New York Times. Reporting from Falluja on July 30, 2016, Denton paints a vivid picture of the devastation with photos and text:
What, exactly, the Islamic State fighters were holding out for was lost on me. The city had been surrounded for months. Nearly all the civilians were gone, either driven out by their rulers’ brutality in the early days, or escaping during breaks in the fighting as the Iraqi forces approached.
The Iraqi Army, special forces and the federal police relied on heavy artillery, close air support from United States aircraft and a patient advance through the city.