Iraqi farmers desperate to go home as cattle perish

Displaced Iraqi farmers from Badush, northwest of Mosul, who fled their village and later returned to retrieve their buffaloes as the battle against Islamic State's fighters continues in Mosul, Iraq, March 25, 2017. REUTERS/Youssef Boudlal

MOSUL, Iraq (Reuters) - In a field off a main road south of Mosul, a stray dog picked at the body of a dead buffalo calf, part of an exhausted herd brought 20 miles on foot by farmers forced to abandon their land in the fight against Islamic State.

The men and their families fled Badush, to the northwest of Mosul, some two weeks ago as the Iraqi army and Shi'ite Muslim paramilitary forces fought Islamic State militants - part of a U.S.-backed offensive to end the jihadists' rule in and around Mosul.