Peshmerga receive 300 refugees fleeing Hawija
Families fleeing ISIS-held city of Hawija.
The refugees were admitted to the Leilan camp after they reached a Peshmerga outpost, the source was quoted by AlMada Press as saying. They were mostly women and children.
The southern ad western areas of Kirkuk have been under ISIS militants’ control since 2014. There are more than 600.000 internally displaced people inside Kirkuk, including more than 26.000 from the town of Hawija.
The United Nation’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs says there have been more than 3 million internally displaced people in Iraq since violence surged with the Islamic State taking over several Iraqi towns and proclaiming an Islamic Caliphate in 2014.
It said recently that that more than 82.000 fled the city of Mosul as Iraqi troops continue battles to clear the city from ISIS militants.
Hundreds of thousands fled homes to refugee camps, but other remain stranded in suffering under the extremist group’s hold, with many reportedly kept as potential human shields against Iraqi government and tribal troops currently in battles to drive the group out of Iraq.
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