Iraqi monitor: 415.000 refugees displaced since start of Mosul campaign
Iraqi refugees in Mosul (Reuters)
This is is the number of people displaced since the Iraqi government launched a U.S.-backed offensive to recapture Iraq’s second largest city and IS’s largest stronghold in Iraq, according to the Iraqi Observatory for Human Rights.
The organization voiced concern for the lives of refugees both inside and outside refugee camps. It quoted some refugees from western Mosul saying they preferred to seek shelter with relatives in Mosul’s recaptured eastern side rather than stay at refugee camps in Hammam al-Alil district where “nothing would help them stay,” as they put it.
Others were quoted by the organization saying it was “difficult to live in camps due to the absence of daily livelihood requirements.”
The Iraqi government has recently said that 181.000 people fled western Mosul since operations launched in February to retake that area, driving the total of those displaced since October to 355.000.
Iraqi troops, backed by U.S.-led air forces and advisers, as well as paramilitary forces, are struggling to clear the western side of Mosul, the recapture of which could mean an effective collapse of the “Islamic Caliphate” declared by the extremist group in 2014.
The United Nations had warned that battles in Mosul could displace at least 400.000 out of 750.000 living in western Mosul, and said in 2016 the offensive to retake the city could force at least 1.5 million people to flee homes in the city.
The Iraqi government says more than 4 million were internally displaced since IS emerged in 2014.