(CNN) The air was thick with the stench of burnt flesh. Dozens of people stood outside the gutted buildings in the Baghdad neighborhood of Karrada, desperately searching for missing relatives. More than 300 died on the night of July 3 when ISIS set off a car bomb at a time when the area was crammed with shoppers. Those who died were Muslims -- Sunni and Shia -- and Christians, a cross section of Iraqi society. A few weeks before, I was crammed into a hot Iraqi army Humvee, driving into the city of Falluja with battle-hardened Iraqi soldiers who had been fighting ISIS for almost two years.

Source: CNN August 16, 2016 11:48 UTC