Tensions rise between Iraqi forces, civilians

MOSUL, Iraq (AP) – “Don’t stop!” the Iraqi special forces lieutenant yelled as a wave of fleeing civilians trudged past his position in Mosul’s Old City in the scorching heat. “Don’t pretend you’re tired! Keep going!” Nearby, dozens of women and children, their hands raised, dropped their bags for security forces to search. Keeping the crowd at a distance, the soldiers yelled at the women to roll up their sleeves and empty everything they were carrying.

“We know you’re Daesh,” the soldiers said, using the Arabic acronym for the Islamic State group.

Tensions have escalated in the final days of the battle for Mosul, as suicide bombings carried out mostly by women hiding among groups of civilians target Iraqi forces closing in on the last few hundred square yards of territory IS controls. At least one such attack struck Wednesday.

At a screening center, security forces detained boys as young as 14 they accused of belonging to IS and barred the elderly and sick from stopping to rest during the difficult journey out of the war- torn district, a more than halfmile trek on foot over mounds of rubble in 115-degree heat.

Many civilians are believed still trapped in the IS-run enclave, with around 1,500 fleeing with every 100-yard advance by Iraqi forces. Those emerging from the Old City at this late stage in the fight were weak, injured, gaunt and pale. For months, the district has been bombarded by Iraqi artillery and cut off from food and water.

The fight for Mosul is taking a “devastating” toll on the Old City’s residents, Doctors Without Borders said in a statement Wednesday. Only a “fraction ... who require medical attention are receiving it, and many are dying on the battlefield,” the humanitarian organization warned.

One man with a fractured leg was carried out Wednesday by a relative, surgical metal pins protruding through the white bandages. A small girl, her head wrapped in gauze, walked past the soldiers holding her mother’s hand. Another man approached on crutches, his right leg missing below the knee, the stump bandaged.