Up to 1 million more Iraqis risk being displaced: Red Cross

BAGHDAD: Up to one million more Iraqis risk being displaced within weeks as government forces battle Daesh in areas including the northern city of Mosul, the Red Cross said Friday.

They would join more than three million Iraqis who have already been driven from their homes by violence over the past two-and-ahalf years.

“The International Committee of the Red Cross believes that up to a million more people could be forced to flee their homes in Iraq in the coming weeks and months,” the Red Cross said in a statement. Iraqi forces are conducting operations aimed at setting the stage for an assault on Mosul, the country’s second city that has been held by Daesh since June 2014.

Mosul was once home to some two million people, but the current population has been estimated at around half that figure. The operation to retake the far smaller city of Fallujah, located much closer to Baghdad, pushed tens of thousands of people to flee, catching the aid community flat-footed and leaving many people in appalling conditions.