The families start lining up every day near the well in Mosul's Karaj al-Shamal neighborhood, filling their large plastic containers with sulfurous, nearly undrinkable water.

As the battle to clear out Islamic State drags on around them, the residents of the wrecked city in northern Iraq have given up waiting for the government or international aid groups and started digging their own water out of the rubble.

They don't always hit the cleanest sources.