Mosul ISIS: more than 12000 refugees return home in Mosul
Displaced Iraqi family from Mosul bake bread for their Iftar, during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan at a refugee camp al-Khazir in the outskirts of Erbil, Iraq June 10, 2017. Picture taken June 10, 2017. REUTERS/Erik De Castro
Mosul (IraqiNews.com) More than 12,000 refugees have returned to their home regions in Mosul over the past week, an Iraqi government official said Tuesday, more than two months after operations against ISIS ended in Mosul.
Jawan Mahmoud, an official in charge of Kurdistan Region provinces in the Migration and Displacement Ministry, said in a statement that 12,553 refugees left camps in eastern and western Nineveh as well as Dahuk to their home regions in Mosul.
Buses from the transport ministry and others run by the Iraqi Joint Operations Command helped carry the refugees and their luggage, according to Mahmoud.
Mosul ISIS
The war against Islamic State militants, who took over large areas of Iraq in 2014, has displaced nearly three million people, according to Iraqi government figures. The battle against IS in Mosul, from October 2016 and until the recapture of the city early July, had displaced more than one million. In august, Nour-Eddin Qablan, vice president of the Nineveh province council, said 50% of displaced civilians had returned to their home regions in western Mosul.
The Iraqi government plans to repatriate all refugees by the end of 2017.
Iraqi government forces are still battling Islamic State members out of their remaining havens in Anbar, Kirkuk and Salahuddin.