The Telegraph's Colin Freeman visits the house in Iraq where bomb clearance experts practise their skills.
The building is part of a training school for those tasked with defusing the vast numbers of booby-traps left by Islamic State in its former strongholds.
Here, death lurks not just round every corner, but under the carpets, behind the bathroom sink, in bedroom cupboards - and yes, in what looked like a pot of mouldy risotto.
"Cooking pots are an Isis favourite, but basically any container that can hold explosives can be used as a booby trap," explains Karl Greenwood, an ex-Army bomb disposal expert from the Mines Advisory Group, a British mine clearance charity.
"If that had gone off in real life, it would have ruined your day rather."
The charity faces a daunting task in Iraq, where IS planted booby traps and IEDs - improvised explosive devices - in tens of thousands of houses and public buildings. In 2017 alone, the last year for which figures are available, they killed 161 people - many of them civilians who had fled Isis's rule and were returning home for the first time.
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10 окт 2024
