Militants shave beards, change attire

khazir (Iraq) — Daesh group fighters were shaving their beards and changing hideouts in Mosul, residents said, as Iraqi forces moved ever closer to the city on Wednesday and civilians fled in growing numbers.

Reached inside Mosul, several residents said the militants seemed to be preparing for an assault after recent advances on the eastern front brought elite Iraqi forces to within five kilometres of city limits.

“I saw some Daesh members and they looked completely different from the last time I saw them,” said a resident of eastern Mosul who gave his name as Abu Saif.

“They had trimmed their beards and changed their clothes,” the former businessman said. “They must daesh fighters are believed to be inside Mosul, according to an estimate be scared... they are also probably preparing to escape the city.”

Residents and military officials said many Daesh fighters had relocated from eastern Mosul to their traditional bastions on the western bank of the Tigris river, closer to escape routes to Syria.

The sounds of fighting on the northern and eastern fronts of the Mosul offensive could now be heard inside the city, residents said, and US-led coalition aircraft were flying lower over the city than usual.

Some 3,000 to 5,000 Daesh fighters are believed to be inside Mosul, Iraq’s second city, alongside more than a million trapped civilians. Aid workers have warned of a major potential humanitarian crisis once fighting begins inside the city itself.

An Iraqi minister said on Wednesday that more than 3,300 civilians fleeing the fighting had sought help from the government the day before, the most for a single day so far.

There was “a big wave of displaced people that is considered the greatest number since the start of the military operation to liberate Nineveh province,” Displacement and Migration Minister Jassem Mohammed Al Jaff said in a statement.

Numbers of displaced residents were growing but stood at a relatively low 8,940 on Wednesday, according to a UN tally, because most of the fighting so far has taken place in sparsely populated areas.

Civilians in villages on the eastern outskirts of Mosul were being bused to a camp near Khazir, a correspondent reported.

“The army made us get out, they told us to leave and said we would see about the details of our settlement” in a camp, said Umm Ali, a 35-year-old woman. — AFP