A Christian town liberated from Islamic State (IS) control has been left desolate and covered in bombs and booby traps.

The jihadis were forced out of Bartella over the weekend by the Iraqi army.

It has since emerged the militants have covered the town in improvised explosive devices.

Weapons belonging to members of Iraq's forces placed near a depiction of the Last Supper at a church

Soldiers from the Iraqi army are having to painstakingly go house-to-house to make sure places are safe.

Most of the town's churches have been destroyed with the ones left standing looted and badly damaged.

On Saturday a church bell was heard in the city for the first time in two years.

Iraqi security forces in the courtyard of the church of Saint Shmoni

The Church of Saint Shmoni was used as an area to launch rockets by the fighters having once held services for hundreds of the people.

Bartella was retaken as part of the offensive to capture Iraq's second city Mosul back from IS.

The campaign to retake Mosul comes after months of planning and involves more than 25,000 Iraqi troops, Kurdish forces, Sunni tribal fighters and state-sanctioned Shiite militias.

It is expected to take weeks, if not months, to drive IS out of Iraq's second largest city, which is still home to more than a million people.

The militants captured Mosul in the summer of 2014, when they swept across much of northern and western Iraq. IS has suffered a series of setbacks over the past year, and Mosul is its last major urban bastion in Iraq.