'Human catastrophe' in Fallujah

A “human catastrophe” is looming in Fallujah as up to 50,000 civilians remain trapped in the IS-held Iraqi city during a continuing government assault.

Families who have managed to escape said fighters from the so-called Islamic State had sealed exit points and shot anyone attempting to flee since the start of Operation Breaking Terrorism last week.

Militants are reported to be holding several hundred families as "human shields" in the city while government forces close in, the United Nations refugee agency said yesterday, citing witness accounts.

Some 3,700 people have fled Falluja, west of Baghdad, over the past week, it said.

A day after announcing a push into the jihadist stronghold, forces led by Iraq's elite counter-terrorism service had some way to go before retaking the city.

Islamic State militants fought back vigorously overnight and parried an onslaught by the Iraqi army on a southern district of Falluja, officers said.

As well as using the trapped civilians as human shields against approaching Iraqi forces, Shia militias and coalition air strikes, there were reports of militants forcing families to move with IS forces from one location to another.

Sir Jeremy Greenstock, who was the UK Special Envoy for Iraq from 2003 to 2004, told Radio 4's Today programme that “renegades” from Saddam Hussein's Ba'ath Party and Sunni tribes were also present in Fallujah and would resist the government's offensive.

“It's bound to be a very destructive campaign,” he said. “There's no way of re-taking Fallujah by the Iraqi security forces without serious harm to the civilian population.”

Iraqi counter-terror forces started moving into the city in the early hours of Monday morning, mortar fire and with air support from the US-led coalition.

There have been no confirmed casualty figures, with both sides claiming to have killed dozens of enemy fighters but no official mention of civilian deaths.

The Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC), which is working in displacement camps at Amiryiat Al Fallujah, has warned that there are few safe routes for evacuations as the city is attacked from three directions.

 “A human catastrophe is unfolding in Fallujah. Families are caught in the crossfire with no safe way out,” said general secretary Jan Egeland.

“Warring parties must guarantee civilians safe exit now, before it's too late and more lives are lost.”

Families have trekked for hours under the cover of darkness, moving through fields and hiding in disused irrigation pipes, but women and children are among many believed to have been killed or flogged for attempting to escape.

Conditions for those left inside Fallujah were described as “dire”, with a severe lack of food, clean drinking water and medicine.

UNHCR said that stories of extreme desperation were emerging, with rocketing food prices of more than $40 for a kilo of flour forcing people to search rubbish and eat rotten food.

Save the Children said the price of a single can of infant milk had hit £35 at times during the siege and that potatoes and sugar cost between ten to fifteen times more than normal, forcing families to eat soup made from grass or a handful of seeds.

Some residents have reportedly killed themselves, while parents are said to have drowned their children in the river or abandoned them because they could not feed them.

The UNHCR has also received reports of a dramatic increase in of executions of men and boys for refusing to fight for IS and “many” people dying in air strikes or buried alive under the rubble of their homes.

Fallujah, lying around 40 miles west of Baghdad, was the first Iraqi city to be taken by IS in its January 2014 offensive and is the group's largest stronghold in Iraq after Mosul.