The residents of the Iraqi town of Bashiqa - who number 100,000 or so - were evacuated two years ago before the men of so-called Islamic State rolled in.
As a consequence, they relinquished control of everything they could not carry with them - like their homes and businesses and many of the things contained within.
In the hands of IS militants, entire neighbourhoods were converted into urban fortresses.
Shops and businesses were looted and church buildings, belonging to the region's Assyrian Orthodox community were turned into bomb-making factories.
Such activities were revealed after Kurdish fighters - called the Peshmerga - took control of the area this week.
The man in charge of the operation, General Bahram Arif Yasin, says 100 members of Islamic State have been killed.
But members of his 7th division continue to find militants hidden in houses, sheds and tunnels burrowed underground.
We got a chance to see one of these tunnels when a Peshmerga unit took us to a middle-class neighbourhood on the outskirts of town.
The homes on several streets have been adapted for combat - we saw a food pantry that had been used as an armoury with racks for machine guns, rocket-launchers and ammunition.
There were holes in garden walls for snipers and a living room kitted out as a medical clinic.
Curiously, we viewed a number of rooms full of dirt, excavated from a tunnel linking houses on opposite sides of the street.
This dank and claustrophobic space was far more than a mere passageway.
Coalition aircraft dominate the sky in and around Bashiqa and they have used overwhelming firepower to destroy dozens of buildings.
IS have improvised by moving underground - I saw a series of rooms where they worked, read, slept and prayed.
Earth from this complex was piled up inside for fear of giving away the location of their tunnel.
It was terribly ramshackle - soft earthen walls with a few wooden beams to hold it up - although they'd deployed woollen blankets and some plywood sheets as decoration.
More importantly, living and fighting below the surface did not seem to keep them alive.
My Peshmerga guide told me they knew there was an IS unit camped out here when they advanced on this position a few days ago.
"We came through (one) opening and they escaped out the other end. We went after them through the holes they had made in the houses.
"We caught them - there were five and we killed them."
With that he smacked his hands, grabbed his rifle and told me this gloomy tunnel would soon be no more.
With that he smacked his hands, grabbed his rifle and told me this gloomy tunnel would soon be no more.
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