Mosul raises humanitarian alarm in war
At a refugee camp in Syria's Al-Hawl, 11-year-old Jawaher limps from a wound she sustained in an Islamic State group mortar attack while she and family were fleeing Iraq's Mosul.
Her family are among the thousands who fled the city just before the October 17 start of an offensive by the Iraqi army and the US-led anti-IS coalition to retake the city from jihadists.
She was crossing from Iraq into Syria, seeking refuge in the war-torn country, when she came under fire.
"I was sitting with my friends, I just saw a shell land between us and I passed out," she whispers, her head covered in a pink veil.
"My foot still hurts from the shrapnel, but I'm feeling a bit better now."
Around her, white tents are lined up in the desert, battered by dust.
Men and women wander around the makeshift camp, some carrying a child, or boxes of supplies, others hauling stuffed backpacks or heavy luggage.
Al-Hawl lies in Syria's northeastern Hasakeh province, much of which was held by IS, though Kurdish and Arab forces backed by the US-led coalition have taken large swathes of territory back from the jihadist group.
Some 5,000 Iraqi civilians have arrived in Syria in the last 10 days alone, according to Save the Children.
CONSTANT FEAR
To cope with the influx, bulldozers are busy expanding the camp at Al-Hawl, a few kilometres from the Iraqi border.
Around 6,000 Iraqi refugees have been in the camp for the last two years, but the population is expected to swell to as many as 30,000 people, according to an official with the local Kurdish administration responsible for the camp.
"There are between 2,000 and 3,000 people waiting at the border," he told AFP.
The process is slowed by the need to carefully vet the arrivals, he added. "There are security procedures to follow.”
More than 200 kilometres of arid territory separate the Al-Hawl camp from Mosul, which has been controlled by IS since June 2014.
Refugees fleeing must travel most of that distance on foot, through territory mined by IS, which also fires on civilians as they escape in a bid to prevent them from leaving.
"We walked all night, in the middle of explosions and bombs. Bullets whistled over our heads until we got to the border," says Ibtissam Khadr, her face wrapped in a black veil.
"If Daesh [Islamic State] knew we were going to escape, they would have cut our throats," she adds, sitting with her children at the entrance of a tent.
"We got here thanks to Syrian smugglers. We were afraid of everything: the planes, Daesh. The fear didn't leave us for even a minute."
Meanwhile, elite Iraqi forces yesterday retook a town on the eastern edge of Mosul while Kurdish peshmerga opened a new front in the offensive to wrest back the jihadists' last bastion in Iraq.
Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi told an international meeting in Paris that the four-day-old offensive was "advancing faster than expected".
France and Iraq were co-chairing the meeting on the future of Mosul, which observers have warned could raise even greater humanitarian challenges than the massive military operation to retake it.
The counter-terrorism service (CTS), Iraq's best-trained and most battle-seasoned force, retook full control of Bartalla, a town that lies less than 15 kilometres (nine miles) east of Mosul.
"I announce to the people of Bartalla and Mosul we have complete control over Bartalla," CTS commander Taleb Sheghati al-Kenani told reporters from the town.
"Its residents, its churches and all of its infrastructure are now under the control of CTS," he said of the small Christian town that IS seized when it swept across the Nineveh plain in August 2014.
Some 120,000 Iraqi Christians were forced to flee their homes at the time.
In some areas, the Iraqi advance was met by a trickle of civilians fleeing both the fighting and the jihadists who ruled them for two years.
POST-IS MOSUL
The Iraqi prime minister told the Paris meeting on Mosul's future that the operation to retake it was making progress.
"We are advancing faster than we had expected and planned," he said by video link.
French President Francois Hollande told the meeting that jihadists were already leaving for Raqa, their stronghold in neighbouring Syria.
"We can't afford mistakes in the pursuit of the terrorists who are already leaving Mosul for Raqa," Hollande said.
Mosul, Iraq's second city, was seized by IS in June 2014.
Its capture touched off an offensive that saw the jihadists conquer about a third of the country and declare a "caliphate" straddling Iraq and Syria.
DISPLACEMENT
The United Nations estimated some 2,00,000 people could be displaced in the first two weeks alone of the operation to retake Mosul.
But the operation is expected to last weeks or months, and the numbers of those fleeing the fighting and the jihadist group will likely increase significantly.
The UN and aid groups had already sounded the alarm about the massive wave of Iraqis expected to be displaced by the Mosul offensive.
The UN fears up to a million people still trapped inside Mosul could be forced to flee by the fighting, sparking a humanitarian emergency.
The UN's refugee agency said in a statement yesterday that so far around 1,900 people have been displaced from the Qayyarah and Hammam al-Alil areas and been given assistance.
"There are real fears that the offensive to retake Mosul could produce a human catastrophe resulting in one of the largest man-made displacement crises in recent years," William Spindler, spokesman for the United Nation's aid agency, said.
TWO-PRONGED OFFENSIVE
The Iraqi army and Kurdish Peshmerga forces began a two-pronged offensive against IS in Mosul, from the northeastern Bashiqa region and through eastern Bartella villages.
Iraqi special forces joined yesterday's offensive in a pre-dawn advance on Bartella, encountering heavy fire from IS.
The elite forces were helped by US-led coalition air raids and heavy artillery.
Al Jazeera's Zeina Khodr, reported hearing the sound of heavy gunfire and artillery from the frontline near Bartella, as the offensive got under way.
"Earlier this morning, ISIL tried to send a suicide car bomber, but that was destroyed," Khodr said.
Al Jazeera's Hoda Abdel Hamid, reporting from the frontline near Bashiqa, said that the "intensive" northeastern offensive, led by the Kurdish Peshmerga, also marks a new entry point into the battle.
Just as the Peshmerga forces recaptured nine villages on the first day of the offensive, the goal of the northeastern push is to retake and secure surrounding areas in Bashiqa before awaiting support from Iraqi troops to prepare to enter Mosul city, Abdel Hamid added.
The offensive is the largest operation launched by Iraqi forces since the 2003 US-led invasion.
More than 100,000 troops are involved, while there are thought to be nearly 5,000 IS fighters in and around Mosul. It is expected to take weeks, if not months.
IS captured Mosul during a lightning advance across northern Iraq in 2014, and its leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi announced the formation of a self-styled caliphate from the pulpit of a Mosul mosque.
'IS DRONE'
At dawn, bulldozers flattened a path for forces in armoured vehicles to carve their way down towards Bashiqa.
As tanks and personnel carriers prepared to advance, a shadow glided above them and one peshmerga shouted "drone!"
Fighters opened fire at it with every weapon available, causing an almighty din and lighting up the dim morning sky, until it fell to the ground and the troops resumed their advance.
An AFP reporter in the village of Nawaran near Bashiqa saw the downed drone, a Raven RQ-11B model similar to a booby-trapped one that killed two Kurdish fighters and wounded two French soldiers a week ago.
Iraqi federal forces and the peshmerga have not divulged casualty figures in this offensive.
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