Marcia Biggs:
The former commander of coalition forces in Iraq, Lieutenant General Stephen Townsend, recently listed 81 locations where bombs had been dropped but had not yet exploded.
Facilities used to make weapons were often on the coalition’s list of high-value targets. So, these places are now twice as likely to contain hazardous materials.
So, this was a workshop for electrical engineering students. You can still see the lab schedules here. The university was hit by an airstrike in 2015. Afterwards, university faculty members found bomb-making instructions among the rubble. This was most likely an ISIS bomb-manufacturing factory, and given the crater it left, a high-value target.
Despite the damage, Dean Al-Obaidi says he will hold his classes this fall in alternative buildings, until the campus is ready. Enrollment is expected to be in the thousands. They are students who lost three years of education during the fighting and do not want to lose another year.