Saying it with flowers: Valentine's Day helps heal Mosul's Islamic State scars

For many Mosul residents, the Islamic State occupation is a traumatic memory that still dominates daily life, around a year and an half after the jihadist group was forced out of its one-time Iraqi stronghold. So Valentine's Day offered the city the chance to try to reconnect with a kinder and gentler past before celebrations and festivities were banned, as members of a civil activist group walked through war-scarred streets distributing flowers.

"Love is not only between a young man and a young woman," said one, Ali Amjid. "Love is among brothers, love among friends ... Love of your city which we should work to develop." For Fahd al-Yousif, arranging red balloons outside his cafe, healing the psychological damage wrought by Islamic State is a communal task that is only just beginning.

"It is difficult to talk about Valentine's Day with someone who lost his son, brother, wife ... ," he said. "But we are gradually starting to regain some of these values and such love."

(Writing by John Stonestreet in London; Editing by Alison Williams)