Children ‘seeing things no one should see’

BAGHDAD // Children are being killed, wounded and made witnesses to violence as Iraqi forces battle ISIL in heavily populated Mosul, Amnesty International said yesterday.

“Children caught in the crossfire of the brutal battle for Mosul have seen things that no one, of any age, should ever see,” Amnesty’s Donatella Rovera said.

“I met children who have sustained horrific wounds and seen their relatives and neighbours decapitated in mortar strikes, torn to shreds by car bombs or mine explosions, or crushed under the rubble of their homes,” Ms Rovera said. One woman, Mona, recounted how her daughters, aged eight and 14 months, were killed by mortar fire last month.

“I was telling the girls to go inside. There was shelling and shooting 24 hours a day in our area,” Mona told a rights group.

“Just then, a mortar landed by the house. I collapsed on the spot, my daughter Teiba fell with her head against the gate, and the little one crawled and crawled till she reached me and collapsed on my lap.” Iraqi forces launched an operation to retake the country’s last ISIL- held city more than two months ago, and have pushed the extremists out of several neighbourhoods on Mosul’s eastern side. But the battle to retake the city, where a million or more people may still live, is far from over.

During heavy fighting, up to 100 wounded civilians a day flow into the West Erbil Emergency Hospital, the facility in the capital of Iraq’s self-ruled Kurdish region where most casualties from the conflict are brought, said Dr Ansam Abdul-Saheb.

“We have many difficulties because they come without their relatives.”

At least 100,000 civilians have so far fled the city. Those staying behind are in danger of being hit by shelling or caught up in intense house-to-house fighting. Neighbourhoods retaken by government troops have endured repeated mortar shelling and sneak attacks.

Human Rights Watch said yesterday that ISIL fighters were deliberately targeting civilians who refuse to join them.