South of Mosul, Iraq — Several hundred civilians fled through the desert on Tuesday to escape fighting against jihadists in the Mosul area, reaching an Iraqi position south of the embattled city.
At least 16,000 people have been displaced since Iraqi forces launched a push to recapture west Mosul from the Daesh group on February 19, according to the ministry of displacement and migration.
“So far today (Tuesday), we have around 300 displaced people — men and women and children,” Brigadier General Salman Hashem of the Counter-Terrorism Service told AFP.
“There are more coming. They’re stopped at a checkpoint when they arrive and separated. The men are searched and then checked against a database,” Hashem said.
While the men are taken to be checked, the women and children sit on sheets on the dusty ground, and security forces bring them water, food and condensed milk.
Eighteen-year-old Baidaa, wearing a ragged black scarf and holding her young daughter, said she and her family had fled early in the morning.
“We left at five o’clock this morning. We started running and then we walked the rest of the way. We had to run because we were afraid of fire from (Daesh),” Baidaa said.
“They trapped us and they didn’t want us to leave,” she said of the jihadists.
Her two children didn’t “understand what’s happening, they just followed us. They were so afraid of the firing from the fighting.”
Iraqi forces backed by a US-led coalition launched a massive operation to retake Mosul on October 17, recapturing the city’s east and then setting their sights on its smaller but more densely populated western side. — AFP
