250 displaced families arrive in Mosul, coming from Syria: MP

Mosul (IraqiNews.com) Over 200 displaced families have returned back from a refugee camp in Syria to Mosul city, an Iraqi MP was quoted saying on Sunday.

“250 families from Nineveh arrived over the past two days to Hamam al-Alil camp in south of Mosul, after staying for months in al-Hawl camp in Syria, enduring hard humanitarian situations there,” MP Abdul Rahim al-Shemari, who received the families, told Anadolu agency.

Shemari indicated “cooperation with Syrian authorities until the displaced arrived on board of government’s buses.” More people will return back later. “We provided 60 buses to transfer them to Mosul, which they fled during battles between Iraqi troops and Islamic State.”

Meanwhile, Cap. Haidar Ali al-Waeli, said “security committees from al-Hashd al-Shaabi [Popular Mobilization Forces] have been tasked with checking identities of the Iraqi returnees from al-Hawl Syrian camp.”

Waeli added that “the security checking will be intensive as some IS militants seek hiding through fake identities due to being in control of the official documents and stamps of the civil status and nationality departments in several provinces like Nineveh, Anbar and Salahuddin, over the past three years.”

Thousands of residents from Mosul and western regions in Nineveh including Baaj, Tal Afar, Qahtaniya and other villages located near borders with Syria had fled toward al-Hawl refugee camp as battles between troops and the militants broke out.

Around four million civilians were internally displaced, while thousands of others fled toward neighboring countries including Syria, Turkey and other European countries, since IS emerged in 2014 when it covered one third of the country.