TIKRIT, Iraq--As the sun set, helicopters lifted off the ground and flatbed Toyota Landcruisers carrying Iraqi soldiers rolled past the air base. Airstrikes rumbled in the distance. The security forces had set up their command post about 40 miles south of Tikrit in northern Iraq.
Sunni tribes, Shia forces, and Iraqi Christians had fought together for weeks against the militants who swept in from Syria last year, killing or stealing anything in their path.
The campaign to take back Tikrit wasn't easy. The radicals had stuffed human and animal bodies with explosives, and hidden IEDs, booby traps in and around the city, according to soldiers interviewed on the front lines. But aided by U.S. airstrikes, the Iraqi soldiers and militias finally took the ISIS stronghold.
This week, Iraqi forensic teams began exhuming bodies from mass graves believed to contain hundreds of soldiers killed by Islamic State militants last year.
The Iraqi security forces now plan to continue north along the Tigris toward the city of Mosul, which ISIS claimed last June.
As the sun slipped away in the west, the fighters knew more bloodshed awaited them just over the horizon.