Families leave camps for Mosul
Thousands able to go home after city’s east is liberated from extremists
KHAZIR, IRAQ // Hundreds of families who fled Mosul last year left displacement camps yesterday to head back to their homes, the biggest influx of residents since Iraqi forces’ recent recapture of the east of the city. More than 180,000 people were displaced after the start of an offensive against ISIL on October 17.
At least 22,000 have returned home, according to the United Nations.
The authorities have been organising returns from Khazir and Hasansham displacement camps twice a week.
“We are now taking 500 families, which means 2,700 people, to their liberated houses,” local official Mustafa Hamid Sarhan said at the Khazir camp, which lies south-east of Mosul.
“This is the biggest wave,” he said, as about 50 buses awaited families who were cleaning up their tents and packing their belongings for the journey home. Dhabbah Mohammed Khader, 45, from the neighbourhood of Al Zahraa, was returning home with two of her sons.
“I’m so happy we finally got rid of ISIL,” she said, with tears running down her face. “We can go home now.”
Meanwhile, ISIL fighters took up sniper positions along the west bank of the Tigris river ahead of a government offensive into that side the city. The commander of the campaign to retake ISIL’s last major stronghold in Iraq has said preparations to cross the Tigris were under way.
In recent days, ISIL fighters moved into Mosul’s main medical complex – a dozen buildings located between two of the city’s five bridges – to take up observation and sniper points.
About 750,000 people live in western Mosul according to the UN, which voiced concern for civilians in an area beyond the reach of aid organisations.
It took 100,000 Iraqi troops, members of Kurdish security forces and Shiite paramilitar- ies, backed by air and ground support from a United Statesled coalition, almost 100 days to retake east Mosul in the biggest battle in Iraq since the US-led invasion of 2003.
Taking the west side – the location of Mosul’s Grand Mosque where ISIL leader Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi declared a caliphate in 2014 – could prove tougher as it is crisscrossed by streets too narrow for armoured vehicles.
The extremists are expected to put up a fierce fight because they are cornered in a shrinking area, but the narrow streets could also deprive them of one of their most effective weapons: suicide car bombs.
The group released drone footage yesterday of cars driving at high speed into clusters of army Humvees and armoured vehicles before being blown up.
In some cases, Iraqi soldiers can be seen running away as the car bombs speed towards them. The recordings also show munitions dropped from the drones.
Iraqi forces estimated that the number of militants in Mosul was between 5,000 and 6,000 at the start of the battle.
They said 3,300 had been killed in fighting.
Aid agencies estimated that the number of people killed and wounded since the start of the Mosul offensive – both civilian and military – is several thousand.
The city had a pre-war population of about 2 million.