Number of Iraqis Fleeing Mosul Nears 60000

The terror group retaliated with six suicide auto bomb attacks but each of the vehicles was destroyed before reaching Iraqi lines.

The overnight raid that led to the capture of government buildings and the surrounding government complex lasted about an hour, he said. The militants, he said, are moving from house to house and deploying snipers.

The Iraqi Army has seized the al-Hurriya Bridge, a spokesperson said, in the latest push to retake Mosul from the self-styled Islamic State terrorist group. Many of Islamic State’s operational leaders were killed before Iraqi forces began attacking the west. A new phase of the battle begun on February 19, aimed at recapturing the western parts of the city still under IS control. The U.N. Office for Humanitarian Coordination said 42,000 people were displaced in the week that ended Sunday.

More than 30,000 civilians have fled west Mosul, according to figures by the Norwegian Refugee Council released last Friday.

“Unfortunately, there is a clear shortfall in the work of these (UN) organisations”, Jassem Mohammed al-Jaff said in a statement.

“This is disgusting”, Lise Grande, the United Nations humanitarian coordinator in Iraq said.

Mosul, 400 km north of the Iraqi capital of Baghdad, has been under IS control since June 2014, when government forces abandoned their weapons and fled, enabling IS militants to take control of parts of Iraq’s northern and western regions. It can handle another 100,000 displaced people from western Mosul at refugee camps, Minister of Migration and Displacement Jassem Mohammad al-Jaff said Sunday.

But the number who have fled is still just a fraction of the 750,000 people believed to have stayed on in west Mosul under IS rule.

“There’s significant numbers that are still able to defend that city”, he said.

Among the most severely injured were a mother and her five children in an attack Thursday on Mosul’s northeastern Giraj al-Shimal district.

It’s the second bridge to be captured in the city.

All evidence in that regard would be for ISIS, which is known to have a nascent chemical weapons program, which it has used in both Iraq and Syria.

“Counter-Terrorism Service forces are attacking Al-Sumood and Tal al-Ruman neighbourhoods, and the advance is still ongoing”, the JOC said.

Iraqi forces “recaptured the archaeological museum”, Lieutenant General Raed Shakir Jawdat said in a statement, without specifying when this occurred.

They were also reported to have fired rockets and mortar rounds filled with toxic agents from the western side of the city to the eastern, government-controlled side.

Concerns have also been raised about reports of chemical weapons use in Mosul.