Mosul dilemma: Stay or f lee?
Aid groups fear any sudden mass exodus will overwhelm the few camps
QAYARA, Iraq — Bayda Muhammad Khalaf followed the government’s advice to stay home with her husband and seven children as Iraqi troops advanced near their remote village outside militant-held Mosul. But after the Islamic State fighters fled and Iraqi troops didn’t appear, their tiny supply of food quickly ran out and the family had to f lee.
When the Mosul offensive began a week ago, departing IS fighters warned villagers to stay off the roads and out of surrounding fields, which were mined. So Khalaf waited until she saw a passing shepherd, then she and her family made the eight-hour walk out of no man’s land behind a herd of sheep.
“We were starving,” she said. They had watched the start of the offensive on TV and thought Iraqi forces were on the way, but the troops’ progress has been slow and Mosul’s southern approach is littered with dozens of villages.
Eventually, Khalaf couldn’t produce enough breast milk for her infant daughter.
Mosul, the largest city controlled by the Islamic State group, is still home to more than 1 million civilians. The government and international aid groups fear that a sudden mass exodus will overwhelm the few camps on its outskirts.
The massive offensive is expected to take weeks, if not months. Driven by fear or hunger, many are already putting themselves in grave danger and complicating the campaign to expel the militants from the city, which fell to IS in 2014.