Battle for western Mosul continues
For more than two years, many of the children in Mosul have been out of school as Islamic State took over the city after Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi declared a caliphate from the Great Mosque in the city.
In eastern Mosul, UNICEF has reopened 320 schools, allowing 285,000 children to return to school for the first time in two years. Fadia, who asked not to use her last name, is working as a teacher at the Hassam Displacement Camp teaching children who fled the fighting in Mosul. UNICEF established a Temporary Learning Space last October, with catch-up classes in math, science, Arabic and English.
“I became a teacher because of my daughter who is five years old,” she told The Media Line. “The situation here at the camp is dire. The children have so many needs, financially, emotionally and physically. They don’t have clothes or shoes. Many of the children come to school barefoot. For two and a half years they have been without education, toys or ways to express their feelings.”
She herself had to flee her home in 2014 so she understands how difficult it can be.
“Education is essential for every child. They have the right to go to school and to learn,” she said.
UNICEF partners are providing emergency child protection assistance to newly displaced children and families in the camps. To date, 70,000 displaced children have received psychological first aid and mental support and care through mobile teams of social workers.
Meanwhile, the fighting in western Mosul continues. The fight in western Mosul is complicated by about 400,000 civilians still in the area and the crowded alleyways of the city.
As air strikes resume on Islamic State positions in Mosul, the UN said it is expanding camps for displaced persons in the area. More than 300,000 people have fled the area since the start of the US-backed campaign to recapture Mosul from Islamic State in October. Before the current wave of fighting, Mosul had a population of a million and a half, split more or less evenly between eastern and western Mosul on opposite sides of the Tigris River. Iraqi forces captured the eastern side in January and since then have been working to capture the western side. The streets are densely packed and Islamic State fighters are hiding among civilians. UN officials said that as the fighting continues, they expect more refugees.
Lise Grande, the UN Humanitarian Coordinator for Iraq, told Reuters that fighting in the Old City could lead to “a humanitarian catastrophe, perhaps the worst” in the three-year war to evict Islamic State from Iraq.
International aid organizations have estimated the civilian and military death toll at several thousand since the US-backed offensive by government forces to retake Mosul began in October.
More than 330,000 people have been displaced so far, according to the International Organization for Migration.
“Humanitarian partners are preparing contingency plans for a number of different displacement scenarios in western Mosul, including for a possible mass outflow of 350,000-450,000 civilians, or a siege-like situation of the Old City,” the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said in a report.
Meanwhile the US military has launched a formal investigation into what role the US played in the deaths of dozens of civilians in Mosul, Iraq in March amid warnings from a top American general that the dense urban fight is making it harder to avoid killing innocent civilians. Gen. Joseph Votel, head of US Central Command, told Congress that Islamic State militants are exploiting American sensitivities to civilian casualties, using people as human shields to avoid being targeted by strikes.
“As we move into the urban environment it is going to become more and more difficult to apply extraordinarily high standards for things we are doing, although we will try,” Votel said during a House Armed Services meeting. More than 200 civilians were reported killed in the airstrike, and some have blamed US forces for the airstrike.
Votel said the investigation will look at what Islamic State gunmen may have contributed to the civilian deaths. He and others have said the ordinance used by the US that day should not have taken the entire building down. Senior military officials have said that Islamic State may have deliberately gathered civilians in the building and then planted additional explosives in both this and other cases. Votel also told the committee that nearly 800 Iraqi security forces have been killed and 4,600 wounded in the increasingly brutal battle to retake Mosul from IS extremists that began last fall. Amnesty International on Tuesday said the rising death toll in Mosul suggested the US-led coalition wasn’t taking adequate precautions as it helps Iraqi forces try to retake the city.