ERBIL, Kurdistan Region –Islamic State militants continue to attack and kill civilians in Mosul who refuse to become part of the group's forced human shield and as they retreat further west in the face of Iraqi troops advances into the city, says Human Rights Watch organization in a report.
“It’s indiscriminately or deliberately killing and wounding people for refusing to be human shields,” said Lama Fakih, deputy Middle East director at HRW.
The militants have frequently used Mosul residents as human shields while reiterating west and attacked those who flee with mortar shells and sniper fire.
“If ISIS really cared about the people trapped in its so-called caliphate it would let them flee to safety.” Fakih said
Iraqi troops launched an offensive on October 17 to wrest control of the second largest city from ISIS.
Asma, a woman from Qadisiya neighborhood in eastern Mosul told HRW that three of her young children had been wounded in an ISIS mortar attack on December 1.
“The mortar [shell] hit when I had gone to get water from the [local] tank because there was no running water,” she said. “When I came back out Alaa hugged me and I saw that half his face was blown off.”
Nearly 2,000 people have been fleeing Mosul on a daily basis, said Darbaz Muhammad, Iraq’s minister for migration and displaced in a press conference held in Sulaimani earlier this week.
Rudaw cameras have captured devastating scenes of ISIS mortar attacks on different occasions, claiming the lives of and wounding civilians in liberated neighborhoods.
“ISIS targets areas with mortar rounds which affects civilians the most.” said Rizgar Ismael, a Kurdish solder within Iraqi army, only days before himself was killed by an ISIS sniper inside Mosul.
“ISIS targeted here with 16-17 mortar rounds today,” Ismael said.
More than 30 Mosul residents have provided HRW with firsthand accounts of ISIS mortar, sniper and car bomb attacks.
ISIS had taken an estimated 1,600 civilians to Mosul to shield themselves from airstrikes, the office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights said in mid-November.
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