Update for Wednesday, July 19, 2017

Human Rights Watch says a site has been discovered in Mosul where Iraqi forces executed 24 civilians. "A shopkeeper in a neighborhood west of Mosul’s Old City directed the observers to an empty building where “17 male corpses, barefoot but in civilian dress, [were] surrounded by pools of blood,” according to HRW."

However, it is not clear who these men were and Iraqi forces have been exacting revenge on individuals associated with IS, or believed to be. Excerpt:

Speaking to The Associated Press, four Iraqi officers from three different branches of the military and security forces openly admitted that their troops killed unarmed and captured Islamic State suspects, and they defended the practice. They, like the lieutenant, spoke on condition of anonymity because they acknowledged such practices were against international law, but all those interviewed by AP said they believed the fight against IS should be exempt from such rules of war because militant rule in Iraq was so cruel.
However, the killings risk tipping Iraq back into the cycles of violence that have plagued the country for over a decade, according to Belkis Wille, Iraq researcher with Human Rights Watch. The Islamic State group was able to attract recruits in the past because of people’s anger over abuses, including arbitrary detentions, torture and extrajudicial killings, she said.

Mosul is far from secured, as a booby-trapped house explodes, killing 13.

More than a million civilians remain displaced from Mosul and many have no homes to return to:

Those who ventured back to Mosul found wrecked houses, destroyed schools and hospitals, and water and power shortages, alongside the threat of gunfire and booby-traps.

Whole neighborhoods of Iraq's second city are reduced to the crumpled ruins of what were once homes and businesses -– much of the destruction due to air strikes and artillery by the U.S.-led coalition. Charred wrecks of cars litter the streets.

"The end of the battle for Mosul isn't the end of the ordeal for civilians. The humanitarian situation not only remains grave, but could worsen," the Norwegian Refugee Council, one of many international organizations and governments helping the relief and rehabilitation effort, said in a statement.

Iraqi troops pull starving orphans from the rubble. (Warning: Pictures are hard to look at.)

Patrick Cockburn reports that the civilian death toll in Mosul may be 40,000, according to Kurdish intelligence.

[Kurdish official Hoshyar Zebari] accuses the government in Baghdad, of which he was until recently a member, of not doing enough to relieve the suffering. “Sometimes you might think the government is indifferent to what has happened,” he said. He doubts if Christians, Yazidis, Kurds and other minorities, who have lived in and around Mosul for centuries, will be able to reconcile with the Sunni Arab majority whom they blame for killing and raping them. He says some form of federal solution for future governance would be best.
Reading from Kurdish intelligence reports, Mr Zebari says that a high level of corruption among the Iraqi military forces occupying Mosul is undermining security measures to suppress Isis in the aftermath of its defeat. He says that suspect individuals are able to pass through military checkpoints by paying $1,000 (£770) and can bring a vehicle by paying $1,500. He says corruption of this type is particularly rife in the 16th and 9th Iraqi Army Divisions and the Tribal Volunteers (Hashd al-Ashairi), drawn in part from the Shabak minority in the Nineveh Plain.

Zebari also says that IS fighters are in some cases bribing their way to freedom, making civilians reluctant to give information about them.

IS attack in Anbar is repulsed by 2 Iraqi soldiers are killed.