UN expanding civilian camps

Iraqi man loses 14 relatives

MOSUL/ERBIL, Iraq, April 4, (Agencies): The United Nations said on Tuesday it was expanding camps for people fleeing Mosul, as air strikes resumed on Islamic State positions in Iraq’s second largest city.

More than 300,000 people have fled Mosul since the start of the US-backed campaign in October, the office of the UN Humanitarian Coordinator in Iraq said in a statement.

Before the operation to drive Islamic State from the city began, Mosul had a population of about a million and half, split about evenly between the areas east and west of the Tigris river that runs through the middle.

Iraqi forces captured the eastern side in January and in February launched a second phase to take the western side, with air and ground support from a US-led coalition.

They are now battling to take the northwestern part, but the civilian death toll has mounted in the old city, where the militants are dug in amongst residents.

More people are expected to flee the fighting and camps for the displaced north and east of Mosul are expanding, the UN statement said.

Air strikes on the city by the Iraqi air force resumed on Tuesday as the sky cleared after several days of bad weather, the Iraqi military said.

The Iraqi air force carried out at least three air strikes in western Mosul, killing several dozens of Islamic State fighters, according to Iraqi military statements on Tuesday.

A number of Islamic State commanders were killed in an air strike on a position in Hay al-Tanak, a stronghold of the group, they said.

Among those killed were commanders in charge of booby traps, of Arab suicide fighters and child recruitment, the statement added, without identifying them by name. The two other strikes killed militants and destroyed weapons and vehicles.

Islamic State media outlets did not mention the strikes.

A Reuters TV crew saw dozens of people fleeing their homes near or across the frontline, braving sniper and mortar fire, while a helicopter strafed positions further north.

“Shells were falling on us and there is no food, no water, no electricity,” said Hamda Bakheet, a woman in her mid-sixties from the Nablus district, adding that the militants were firing on people who leave the city.

Bakheet said one of her sons was killed when the Islamists first overran Mosul and the other was

accused of being a “renegade” and jailed a year ago. “I hope the army will free him soon.”

Body

He first found the body of his nephew. Then as rescue workers pulled more and more bodies out of the pile of concrete that was once his sister’s home in western Mosul, it was too much for Mahmoud Salem Ismail. He collapsed next to the body bags on the ground.

“Some people were burned, some were cut in half,” Ismail said this week, recounting the March 17 blast in which his sister Bushra and 14 of his relatives died. “I saw my sister. Her face blue but her body was fine.”

The March 17 explosion that levelled the building in the district of New Mosul killed more than 100 people as Iraqi forces were battling Islamic State group militants in the area. The US-led coalition acknowledged there was an airstrike against the building. But US military officials have said the munitions used were not enough to bring down the structure and have suggested IS militants herded people inside, booby-trapped the building and then lured an airstrike.