Hungry and afraid, civilians in Mosul flee
hamam al alil (Iraq) — The gunshot rang out as civilians tried to escape the west of Mosul, where Iraqi forces are battling militants, killing a father as he fled with his family.
“The sniper shot him in the head. His family was all around him, the children and his wife, they were crying,” said Maysun, who saw the shooting as she fled Mosul’s Maamun neighbourhood.
“They didn’t want to leave his side, but we made them continue because it was so dangerous,” the 35-year-old said at a camp for the displaced near Iraq’s second city.
More than 28,000 people have streamed out of west Mosul since February 19, when security forces began a push to wrest control from the Daesh group, according to International Organisation for Migration figures. They are fleeing fighting and food shortages, but they face horrifying scenes as they leave.
“There were bodies in the street as we walked, children, pieces of bodies,” said Safana, 23, as she waited in a food distribution queue in the Hamam Al Alil camp.
She said Daesh fighters had told people to leave her neighbourhood of Maamun in west Mosul.
“They came in the morning and said if we hadn’t left by evening they would kill us,” she said, adjusting her yellow headscarf.
Iraq’s elite Counter-Terrorism Service has faced “fierce” resistance from Daesh in southwest Mosul, and the militants have targeted fleeing civilians, according to senior commander Staff Lt-Gen Abdulghani Al Assadi. He said around 15 fleeing civilians had been killed by militants in the past 10 days, with more wounded.
Safana said civilians had been trapped in their homes during heavy clashes. “Our neighbour’s house was hit by a mortar round and the whole house collapsed on top of them.”
“We managed to pull out two wounded people,” her sister Shaimaa interjected. “But all the rest were dead, and their bodies are still under the rubble.”
Among those killed elsewhere in the area known as the Maamun Flats was 10-year-old Rusud Saddam, whose mother was inconsolable as she walked along a highway to reach transport to a camp for the displaced. —