U.N.: more than 600.000 Mosul civilians still displaced
Displaced Iraqi family from Mosul eat a simple meal for their Iftar, during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan at a refugee camp al-Khazir in the outskirts of Erbil, Iraq June 10, 2017. Picture taken June 10, 2017. REUTERS/Erik De Castro
Mosul (IraqiNews.com) As Iraq marks one year since the launch of operations that managed to recapture the city of Mosul last July, more than 600.000 civilians are still homeless, according to the United Nations.
“673,000 Muslawis are still displaced from their homes; 274,000 are living in 18 camps and emergency sites surrounding the city; 400,000 are staying with family, friends or in rented accommodation,” the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said late Thursday.
The statement said operations which launched on October 17th, 2016 had forced one million people to flee the city, said Lise Grande, Humanitarian Coordinator for Iraq. Out of those, “327,000 have returned to their homes; 184,000 people to eastern Mosul and 143,000 to western Mosul,” Grande explained.
The U.N. coordinator admitted that the volume of migration and displacement had gone beyond the organization’s expectations. “The number of people who fled exceeded even our worst-case projections,” said Ms. Lise Grande, Humanitarian Coordinator for Iraq. “We feared that as many as 700,000 civilians might flee. The actual number was far, far higher.”
Grande said civilians’ conditions in western Mosul were much more difficult than in the eastern part of the city.
“ Ninety-seven percent of the population has returned to their homes in eastern Mosul. People are rebuilding their lives there. Children are in school, services are being reestablished and businesses are open,” she said. “Conditions in western Mosul are very difficult. Large parts of the city are destroyed and have not yet been green-lighted for return…..Families are worried about booby-traps, security and services.”
Iraqi forces, backed by a U.S.-led coalition and paramilitary troops, recaptured Mosul, the birthplace of Islamic State’s self-proclaimed “caliphate”, early July, and are currently heading towards driving the militants out of their last two holdouts in Iraq: Anbar’s towns of Qaim and Rawa.
Iraqi Migration and Displacement Minister Jassem al-Jaff said Thursday that refugees from Nineveh, Kirkuk’s Hawija, Salahuddin’s Shirqat and Anbar’s Rawa and Qaim reached 1.140.388 since October 2016.