ISIL snipers, booby-trapped roads trap families in Fallujah.

ISIL snipers, mined roads deny escape

BEIRU T • Iraqi families who managed to flee the besieged city of Fallujah Thursday as fighting intensified have told of the desperate plight of those living under the jihadists.

Waving white flags, a handful of families were picked up by Iraqi troops carrying little food or water after walking for kilometres. Aid agencies said they had reported “extreme hunger and starvation” among the 50,000 civilians trapped in the city, to the west of Baghdad.

In an update issued on Thursday, the Norwegian Refugee Council, an aid group working with refugees and internally displaced people in Iraq, said 41 families have fled from the outskirts of Fallujah in the past day, bringing the number of escaped families to 114. It estimated that 50,000 civilians are still trapped inside.

The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant is reported to have lined the main routes out of the city with snipers and booby-trapped the roads with mines since the Iraqi army, backed by U.S. air power, began their offensive to recapture the city four days ago. A father and his two sons were reported to have died after stepping on an IED while fleeing from alHsay on the outskirts of Fallujah on Wednesday.

The NRC, which runs a camp for displaced people 30 kilometres outside Fallujah, released photographs of freed families showing malnourished-looking children in dirty clothes. One woman said she and her family escaped in the middle of the night. “They took off their slippers to make less noise. They hid in big drainage pipes, before running to the border raising white flags made of cloth.”

Another mother told the NRC there was little left to eat. Aid agencies said they cannot get access to the city, which no longer has electricity or clean water supplies.

Nasr Muflahi, of NRC, said: “The stories coming out of Fallujah are horrifying. People who managed to flee speak of extreme hunger and starvation. Now they are caught in the crossfire with no safe way out,” he said.

Iraq’s prime minister appealed to Iraqis to postpone their weekly Friday protests so that security forces can focus on retaking Fallujah.

For months, antigovernment protesters, mainly followers of influential Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, have been holding protests every Friday outside Baghdad’s heavily fortified Green Zone and in other provinces, demanding reform to a political system widely seen as corrupt and ineffectual.

“All our security forces are preoccupied with liberating Fallujah and nearby areas, and imposing pressure on them in Baghdad and other provinces to protect the demonstrations will affect this issue (the Fallujah offensive),” Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said.

AHMAD AL-RUBAYE / AFP / GETTY IMAGES Iraqi pro-government forces fire a jeep-mounted anti-tank cannon near al-Sejar village, northeast of Fallujah, as they take part in a major assault to retake the city from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).