26,000 Iraqis flee west Mosul fighting in 10 days

Iraqi forces have yet to advance deep into western areas of the city, but the fighting combined with privation and harsh ISIL rule has already pushed a growing number of civilians to flee.

Iraqis climb onto a truck as they flee western Mosul on March 1, 2017. Aris Messinis / AFP

MOSUL // At least 26,000 people have fled in the first 10 days of Iraq’s push to retake west Mosul, where extremists put up “fierce” resistance on Wednesday.

Iraqi forces have yet to advance deep into western areas, but the fighting combined with privation and harsh ISIL rule has already pushed a growing number of civilians to flee.

Field teams received “26,000 displaced people from [west] Mosul during the past 10 days”, said Jassem Mohammed Al Jaff, the minister of displacement and migration.

The number who have fled is only a fraction of the 750,000 people who are believed to have stayed on in west Mosul under ISIL rule but it is expected to rise sharply in the coming days and weeks.

A commander in the elite Counter-Terrorism Service said on Wednesday that ISIL was putting up tough resistance in the Maamun Flats area of south-west Mosul, which he said is considered “important for the control of the surrounding neighbourhoods”.

“The resistance is violent and fierce because they’re defending this line and this line, in our opinion, is the main line for them,” said staff lieutenant General Abdulghani Al Assadi.

Iraq’s Joint Operations Command announced later in the day that CTS had recaptured Maamun Flats.

The damage in the Maamun area is heavy, with homes destroyed, roads cratered and rows of cars crumpled, some of them piled one on top of another.

Fleeing residents spoke of dire conditions inside the city.

“We’re so hungry, we haven’t eaten almost anything in four days,” said Widaa, a 20-year-old who fled Maamun.

“There was firing all around our house, it was being destroyed bit by bit,” she said.

The drive to retake the west of Mosul – the smaller but more densely populated side of a city split by the Tigris River – began on February 19, after Iraqi troops retook its east side in January.

Sniper fire is a significant danger in Maamun, said Kathy Bequary, the executive director of NYC Medics, a group providing emergency care from a mobile clinic.

“We’re seeing a lot of serious gunshot wounds from snipers,” she said.

“Most of our patients are combatants, but civilians are affected too. Two days ago, we treated a family – a mother, father, son and daughter – who were trying to escape Mosul and were targeted by snipers.”

“The five-year-old daughter was shot in the pelvis, a through and through wound,” she added. “The girl was very, very critical.”

ISIL overran large areas north and west of Baghdad in 2014, announcing a cross-border “caliphate” incorporating swathes of Iraq and Syria.

While Iraqi security forces initially performed dismally, they have since retaken most of the territory they lost, with backing from US-led air strikes and other support.

ISIL has also lost significant ground in Syria, and while it still holds the Syrian city of Raqqa and some territory in western Iraq in addition to west Mosul, the extremists’ self-described “state” is crumbling.

* Agence France-Presse