ERBIL, Kurdistan Region — Despite Iraqi government proclamations of eastern Mosul being fully liberated, many areas remain unsafe, as residents of Mosul have continued to leave the eastern side the city in recent days because of shelling from ISIS-controlled western Mosul.
More than 1,340 IDPs have “fled primarily from north and central neighbourhoods of east Mosul which have been under fire from mortars launched from the west bank,” the United Nations Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) reported Wednesday in its weekly report.
"Hundreds of families have fled their homes in northeastern Mosul," Iraqi Police Brigadier General Omran Mohamed told Anadolu Agency on Wednesday.
The agency also reported Mohamed as saying that over the past 72 hours [ISIS] militants had launched numerous rocket barrages at the city’s eastern districts.
Despite the attacks, about 1,800 internally displaced persons (IDPs) left UNHCR camps and returned to neighborhoods in and around east Mosul in the past week.
Displacement is expected to accelerate when operations to retake western Mosul intensify.
“New arrivals to Nargizilia camp from western Mosul reported having left their homes as a result of shelling, shooting, incidents of armed groups taking over houses, serious food shortages, as well as lack of medical care and basic services,” UNHCR wrote in its weekly report.
The UN Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI) also released causality estimates for January, which included the province of Nineveh, its capital city being Mosul.
“Since the start of the military operations to retake Mosul and other areas in Ninewa, UNAMI has received several reports of incidents involving civilian casualties, which at times it has been unable to verify,” the report stated. “For these reasons, the figures reported have to be considered as the absolute minimum.”
UNAMI reported 187 civilians killed and 285 injured in Nineveh in January. It reported 208 killed and 511 injured for December.
For January, 403 Iraqi civilians were killed and 924 were injured, with Baghdad accounting for 128 killed and 444 injured.
“But Daesh’s goal of breaking the will of the people has collapsed in the face of the Iraqi people’s resilience, despite of the difficulties and hardship, and the steady advances of the Iraqi security forces in the operation to liberate Mosul from the terrorists,” Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for Iraq Jan Kubis said.
Since the Mosul offensive began in October 2016, the Kurdistan Region has received at least 94,000 people displaced from the city and surrounding areas.
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