Rights commission pleads for saving Mosul district of Muthanna
Displaced families from Mosul.
The organization urged the government to lay down a strategy to secure a safe exit for families there. According to the commission, IS obliged the residents of 200 homes to evacuate them after plundering their possessions.
“Daesh (Islamic State) occupied those homes, and its elements positioned on their rooftops for sniping ( targets) at al-Zohour district and other nearby locations,” said the commission. “Most of those houses do not currently have valid water containers on rooftops die to fire shots.”
The commission added that indiscriminate shooting continues on the district for a second week, reaching almost every single house. “Muthanna is an afflicted neighborhood, with no water, no electricity, no fuel, no food and no shops opening.”
The organization voiced fears for the lives of civilians in that neighborhood, noting that some houses see three or four families crammed inside due to evacuations, a situation which, it warned, could end up with those families being used as human shields.
Iraqi government forces, backed by al-Hashd al-Shaabi and US-led air forces, launched a wide-scale military campaign mid October to retake Mosul, IS’s last major stronghold in Iraq. While government forces fought on the eastern shore of the Tigris River, recapturing several districts around the city center since then, al-Hashd al-Shaabi has been fighting the group in the western region, claiming to have isolated IS’s hideouts there from both Syria and Iraq. Iraqi generals said recently they control 40 out of nearly 60 districts of eastern Mosul.
As admitted by military media, progress in battles at the east slowed down over the past week. That is reportedly due to bad weather conditions and the density of the targeted districts.
IS has been targeting areas it had lost to Iraqi forces, leading to civilian deaths and even withdrawals by Iraqi troops in some cases, according to rights organizations and news reports.