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In a video released on July 12 by the ISIS news agency 'Amaq, British journalist John Cantlie, held hostage by ISIS since 2012, is filmed showing the aftermath of coalition airstrikes on Mosul University and a residential area. "You have to ask yourself why the coalition decided to destroy the university," which was "the finest and biggest university in all of Iraq," he says. Cantlie is also filmed in a busy shopping area, where he says a missile was recently dropped on a bank. "The danger to civilian life is enormous. What do they do? Unbelievable," he concludes.
John Cantlie: "Hello, I'm John Cantlie and today we're at Mosul University, or at least what's left of Mosul University. If you look behind me, you'll see it's pretty much been completely smashed to pieces. Now the strike was about three months ago, about 9 o'clock in the morning, and as we've driven onto the campus around the corner here, I've counted at least six huge explosions and I think there must be a lot more. And these are big bombs, we're talking 2,000-pounders here. The university is next two one of the busiest streets in all of Mosul, the shopping street and the market district is literally just on the other side of the main gates over there - 103 people were injured in the strike, 15 were killed. Now, the level of destruction is absolutely massive. Now, Mosul University was the finest and biggest university in all of Iraq. Now if it was a military hard point, if it was a weapons cache or if it was being used as a training ground by the mujahideen perhaps you could understand, but it was simply Mosul's, and in fact Iraq's, finest university now reduced to a huge pile of rubble. And you have to ask yourself: Why? You have to ask yourself: Why did the coalition decide to destroy the university? No one here knows, if you ask them: Why? Why? Why? They'll say 'we don't know. We don't know.' The normal social everyday life had been completely destroyed and you have to ask yourself, if you're going to destroy a university: Why bother?
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"This is the Yabisat district of Mosul. It's a very normal region, normal people live here, and a stick of bombs looks like I don't know, four or five large bombs again, not as big as we saw in the University, rained down in a line straight down this way. These were just shops, houses and small markets. Twenty-four people were killed, two entire families were wiped out, the house of one of those families, you can't see it from this angle it's just behind the wreckage there, the whole house just sunk into the ground. The craters were about...
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"We're stood now in the middle of Nasraf Rafadin Square, this is the absolute center of Mosul. There's thousands of people out here shopping, most of them are watching us filming right now. They're shopping for Eid Al-Fitr the end of Ramadan, very special time, and what have they done? They dropped a missile right in the middle of the bank behind me. Now this isn't some fancy bank for foreign, international clients, it's a bank for the people of Mosul. It served Mosul and they've set it on fire with a huge missile. In the middle of this civilian shopping center, the danger of civilian life is enormous, what do they do? Unbelievable"
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