Mosul population traumatized by conflict, doctors say
GENEVA (Reuters) – The population of Mosul has endured huge suffering in the war to take the northern Iraqi city back from Islamic State, and trauma cases among civilians are sharply rising in the last stages of battle, Doctors without Borders said on Wednesday.
Tens of thousands of civilians remain trapped among the shattered buildings and infrastructure in Islamic State’s redoubt in the Old City by the western bank of the Tigris River, the aid organization said.
Civilians who have managed to get medical treatment are suffering from burns, and shrapnel and blast wounds, while many women and children are in need of critical care and are undernourished, Doctors without Borders officials said.
But there was concern that only a small proportion of the civilian population was managing to get the required medical attention.
“Really, [there is] a huge level of human suffering,” Jonathan Henry, Doctors without Borders emergency coordinator in west Mosul, told a news briefing in Geneva after spending six weeks in Iraq.
“This is a massive population that has been traumatized from a very brutal and horrific conflict,” he said.
Iraqi commanders have predicted final victory in Mosul this week after a grinding eight-month assault on the once two-million-strong city which has pushed Islamic State into a rectangle no more than 300 by 500 meters beside the Tigris.
Islamic State’s brutality and the US-backed war to end its three-year rule has created an “extremely traumatic environment for people to flee from and to return to,” affecting their mental health on a large scale, Henry said.
“The west [of the city] has been heavily destroyed. It’s really mass destruction... similar to the blitz of the Second World War; hospitals have been destroyed, neighborhoods are in ruins.”
The battles in the Old City’s maze of narrow alleyways is fought house by house in streets packed with civilians and planted with multiple explosive devices by the terrorists, who are also using drones and suicide bombings.
Shrapnel and blast wounds, broken bones from collapsed buildings and burns are the main type of wounds seen by the Doctors without Borders team of surgeons in west Mosul, said Henry.
“One of our major concerns is we feel only a small percentage of the patients are reaching medical facilities,” he said.
Half of the 100 war-wounded over the past two weeks at Doctors without Borders’ 25-bed hospital were women and children in need of critical care, and many were malnourished, he said. “But the most urgent patients we feel are not able to leave the conflict area.”
About 900,000 people, nearly half the prewar population of Mosul, have been displaced by the fighting, taking shelter in camps or with relatives and friends, according the aid group.