Civilian life hangs in the balance in Mosul
Locals fear ISIL and government bullets in battle for the city
The screech of falling mortars interrupts the telephone conversation, the latter a rare occurrence in Mosul where ISIL militants will summarily shoot any civilian found with a mobile phone.
For residents of the city in northern Iraq, death is a very real prospect as government forces slowly grind down ISIL resistance. The militants have prevented residents from leaving, making any government advance fraught with risk.
“Daesh and the military are hitting civilians,” says Ahmed, a resident of Fasalea district. “We are surrounded by Daesh but the military doesn’t know in which houses they are hiding.”
ERBIL // As night falls in Mosul, Ahmed is glad to have made it through another day. His house in the Fasalea neighbourhood is near the front line that winds through the eastern districts of the city, putting him at risk of becoming yet another civilian victim of the battle.
The fighting in eastern Mosul has been fierce since Iraqi special forces breached the city’s perimeter on November 1.
“Both ISIL and the military are hitting civilians,” said Ahmed. “We are surrounded by ISIL but the military doesn’t know in which houses the enemy hides.”
So far, Ahmed’s family has escaped injury. A missile crashed into the street in front of his uncle’s house in the district of Zuhor, damaging the building and the family car, but none of his relatives were harmed.
An increasing number of Mosul residents have not been so lucky. In the week ending December 11, 685 civilians were reported wounded in the fighting – a third more than during the previous week, according to the United Nation’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
The actual injury count is almost certainly higher, as most of those in areas under ISIL control do not make it into the statistics. The UN also estimated that at least 332 civilians died last month in Nineveh province, of which Mosul is the capital.
The extremists stopped residents leaving the city, and every neighbourhood the military pushes into is fully inhabited.
A million people are estimat- ed to be in Iraq’s second-largest city. ISIL fighters, hiding among the population, are proving an elusive foe.
The United States-led coalition fighting the extremists is reluctant to deploy aircraft or artillery to weaken ISIL defences, only striking when it believes the risk of collateral casualties is low.
Yet this has not been enough to avoid civilian deaths, residents say. “Yesterday there was a big fight, but the bombardment didn’t hit ISIL, it hit locals and more than 40 people died,” said Hamad, who lives in Mosul’s Al Quds neighbourhood.
Al Quds – held by ISIL – lies next to districts that have been liberated by Iraqi special forces and fighting is now on Hamad’s doorstep. “Our situation is desperate, we are afraid of being shot at by both sides,” he said. With ample time to prepare for battle, ISIL is able to dodge air raids by rapidly shifting positions, according to Hamad.
“ISIL took up positions in the houses on the main road and connected them by punching holes in the walls,” he said.
“When they are targeted by air raids, they move to a different house, so nothing happens to them.”
To stop locals passing on the co-ordinates of their positions to the Iraqi military, ISIL fighters are merciless with anyone caught in possession of a mobile phone.
“If they saw me with a phone, they would not ask me who I was calling, they would shoot me immediately,” said Saad, who lives in the Wahda district that lies close to the Tigris river.
Like all the men interviewed, his identity has been protected by the use of an alias.
In ISIL’s radical world view, residents who refuse to retreat with the extremists when the military takes over their neighbourhood become enemies and legitimate targets. Hamad said the insurgents in his area declared over the mosque’s loudspeakers that civilians in government-controlled districts are unbelievers, and deserve to be killed.
“ISIL is bombarding all the districts that have been liberated,” said Mohammed, who lives in Mosul’s Masaref district.
“They believe the civilians who stayed in their houses should be killed, even before the Iraqi army.”
Masaref was liberated by the
‘ We are surrounded by ISIL but the military doesn’t know in which houses the enemy hides Ahmed resident of Mosul
military at the end of November, but with ISIL mortar fire continuing to rain down on the area, Mohammed is still afraid to leave his house.
As he talks on the phone, he is interrupted by the screech of mortar rounds falling nearby.
ISIL snipers shoot at civilians to discourage people making a run to safety. Such indiscriminate murders have dissuaded Hamad and his family from leaving their house in Al Quds. “How can we go out with the snipers present?” he asks.
To survive, the family now relies on food they stored before the battle began.
With the water supply cut off by the fighting in most of eastern Mosul, they rely on pumps to draw brackish water from the ground.
The electricity supply has also been cut, and fuel prices have soared, as has the cost of food.
Medicine is difficult to come by and medical treatment is restricted to ISIL fighters.
Even in areas further removed from the fighting, life is increasingly unbearable.
With no means to light or heat their houses in the cold winter nights, the people of Mosul go to sleep early. On most nights, Hamad says he is in bed by 7pm – only staying up later to make occasional clandestine phone calls to the outside world. “We hope to wake up and see the Iraqi army controlling our district,” he said before hanging up.