In the al-Karama neighbourhood, on the eastern edge where Iraqi forces are advancing, residents are staying in their homes, the Mosul Eye, a historian and blogger from the city, reported late Tuesday afternoon. But the once large ISIS presence in the area has disappeared and is suspected to have moved into the west of the city, he said.
Within al-Karama, however, the situation “is very concerning and scary,” he added. The neighbourhood has come under heavy bombardment and an entire family was killed as “civilians are stuck in the cross fire.”
Early Tuesday morning, ISIS militants forced all the young men in the neighbourhood to leave their homes and gather in mosques. “It is believed that ISIL is detaining all the former members of the security forces. Some of them returned home, and some stayed. We believe ISIL had executed them,” the Mosul Eye reported, using an alternate acronym for the extremist group.
The UN reported on Tuesday that at least 40 former members of the Iraqi security forces were killed and later thrown into the Tigris River in Mosul by ISIS militants.
The officers “were killed and their bodies thrown in the Tigris River,” after being kidnapped by ISIS earlier in the week, Ravina Shamdasani, spokesperson for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights told reporters on Tuesday.
That brings to 296 the number of former Iraqi security officers killed by ISIS since last Tuesday, according to the UN.
The extremist group has also used 25,000 civilians as human shields in the face of rapid advances from the Iraqi and Kurdish forces in Mosul, Shamdasani also disclosed.
At dawn on Monday, ISIS fighters “brought dozens of long trucks and mini-buses to Hamam al-Alil City, south of Mosul, in an attempt to forcibly transfer some 25,000 civilians towards locations in and around Mosul,” her office said in a statement.
“That seems to support the assertion that they are planning to use these people as human shields as well as to make sure that the area is heavily populated with civilians to frustrate a military operation against them,” she added.
“This is raw information. It hasn’t gone through our usual verification processes,” she said, but stressed that the sources were “reliable.”
On Tuesday, the 16th day of the military operation to evict ISIS from Mosul, the Iraqi joint forces have made significant advances into the city from the east. They have taken control of Gogjali neighbourhood and the Mosul state TV building, and are advancing in the Judaydat al-Mufti neighbourhood, according to official reports.
