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Families pour out of Mosul as Iraqi troops push into last militant-held areas

Displaced Iraqis get out of a military truck as Iraqi forces battle with Islamic State militants, in western Mosul, Iraq May 10, 2017. REUTERS/Suhaib Salem

By Isabel Coles

HAMMAM AL-ALIL CAMP, Iraq (Reuters) – Thousands more people are fleeing Mosul every day since Iraqi troops began their push into the last Islamic State-held areas of the city last week, with food and water running out and the fighting killing increasing numbers of civilians.

More than 22,000 people have fled Mosul since the U.S.-backed forces opened a new front in the northwest of the city on May 4 to try to finally dislodge the militants, the United Nations said on Wednesday, citing Iraqi government figures.

In the past two days alone, more than 11,000 people have passed through a screening site at the Hammam al-Alil camp south of Mosul.

Islamic State fighters are shooting people who try to escape, although some men have been allowed to go in exchange for taking militants’ families with them, said 40-year-old Umm Abdul Rahman, who fled the Musherfa district on Tuesday night.

One man waiting to be checked by security at Hammam al Alil had streaks of blood on his clothes from carrying a woman hit by an Islamic State sniper.

They join an exodus from Mosul of more than 600,000 people in the seven months since Iraqi forces began their offensive there. Roughly 400,000 of those are from the western side of the city which is bisected by the River Tigris.

The militants are now besieged in the northwestern corner, which includes the historic Old City center, the medieval Grand al-Nuri Mosque, and its landmark leaning minaret where their black flag has been flying since June 2014.

About ten families, some forced out of other areas of Mosul as Iraqi forces advanced, were now crammed into every house in the northwest, Abdul Rahman said.

“There is no water, no food. The bombardment is continuous,” she said, and the militants were setting civilian cars and trucks on fire to create smokescreens.

People are surviving on ground wheat boiled in water, 31-year-old Qatra al-Nada Abdullah said, because Islamic State fighters were keeping any food or water that is left for themselves.

“Even wheat is scarce,” she said.

Islamic State fighters are forcing people from their homes to use them as fighting positions, 62-year-old Umm Mohammed said as she clutched a packet of cigarettes forbidden under the militants’ rule.

She and her family had burned everything, even their own shoes, to cook over after fuel ran out.

“We saw fear and hunger and death. I am an old woman and I have never seen anything like this.”

The Sunni Muslim militants seized Mosul in a shock offensive across northern and western Iraq in 2014 but have lost much of that territory to resurgent government forces in the past year. The campaign to recapture the city, Iraq’s second largest, began last October.

Defeat in Mosul, the militants’ last urban stronghold in the country, would still leave Islamic State in control of swathes of Syria and Iraqi territory near the Syrian border.

(Reporting by Isabel Coles; Additional reporting by Ahmed Rasheed in Baghdad; Writing by Ahmed Aboulenein; Editing by Louise Ireland)

Islamic State says it beheads Russian officer in Syria: SITE

Brooklyn man sentenced to 15 years prison over Islamic State support

DUBAI (Reuters) – Islamic State has issued a video showing the beheading of what it described as a Russian intelligence officer captured in Syria, the U.S.-based SITE monitoring website reported on Tuesday.

The Russian Defence Ministry and the FSB security service were not immediately available for comment, but a Russian senator said that “there will be hell to pay” if the recording was proven to be authentic.

The 12-minute Russian-language video, released on the day Russia celebrated the anniversary of the 1945 victory over Nazi Germany with military parades, showed the man dressed in a black jump suit kneeling in a desert scene and urging other Russian agents to surrender.

“This idiot believed the promises of his state not to abandon him if he was captured,” a narrator says in the recording, before being beheaded by a bearded man dressed in combat fatigues.

The authenticity of the recording and the identity of the man could not immediately be verified, nor was it clear when the killing occurred.

Russian senator Viktor Ozerov, who heads the defense committee in Russia’s upper house of parliament, said the defense ministry would check the authenticity of the video.

“Even if it is a fake, it shouldn’t be left without attention,” Ozerov told Russia’s Interfax news agency. “If it happened, then there will be hell to pay.”

Russian forces are backing Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in his war with rebels and militants seeking to oust him. The video showed scenes of what it described as the aftermath of Russian bombing raids in Syria.

The Russian defense ministry says about 30 Russian servicemen have been killed since the start of the Kremlin’s operation there in September 2015.

(Reporting by Sami Aboudi in Dubai and Alexander Winning in Moscow; editing by Ralph Boulton)

Civilians complicate final phase of Mosul campaign: U.S. commander

Smoke is seen as members of the Iraqi forces clash with Islamic State fighters on a frontline in north west of Mosul, Iraq, May 8, 2017. REUTERS/Danish Siddiqui

By Ahmed Aboulenein

SOUTHWEST OF MOSUL, Iraq (Reuters) – The Islamic State fighters herded a group of civilians into a house in the city of Mosul and locked them inside as Iraqi forces advanced. Moments later, the militants entered through a window, lay low for a few minutes, then fired their weapons.

The plan was simple. They would draw attention to the house by firing from the windows, then move to an adjacent building through a hole in the wall, in hope of goading coalition jets flying above to strike the house.

What the militants did not realize was that U.S. advisers partnered with Iraqi troops were watching the whole thing on an aerial drone feed. No air strike was called – and the propaganda coup Islamic State would have reaped from the deaths of innocent people was averted.

“We automatically knew what they were trying to do. They were trying to bait us into destroying this building,” said U.S. Army Lieutenant Colonel James Browning. “This is the game that we play, this is the challenge that we go through every day.”

The challenge is only increasing as U.S.-backed Iraqi forces squeeze the militants into a smaller and smaller area of Mosul, where they are now trapped along with several hundred thousand civilians.

“There is nowhere to go…. the battlefield is much more complicated with the amount of civilians that are moving,” Browning said.

The risks are high: more than 100 civilians were accidentally killed in a single airstrike by the U.S.-led coalition in March.

FINAL PHASE

After opening up a new front in northwest Mosul last week in order to stretch the militants’ defenses, Iraqi forces say the battle for Mosul is now in its final phase.

U.S. servicemen are visible near the frontlines advising the Iraqis as they advance into the last handful of districts controlled by Islamic State, facing a barrage of suicide car bombs and sniper fire.

Browning, a battalion commander from the 82nd Airborne Division, is one of more than 5,000 U.S. service members currently deployed in Iraq to “advise and assist” security forces that collapsed when Islamic State overran Mosul nearly three summers ago.

It is a much smaller footprint than the 170,000 troops deployed at the height of the nine-year occupation that followed the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, during which more than 4,000 American soldiers were killed.

Having extricated U.S. troops from Iraq in 2011, the White House is loath to re-enter a costly conflict that would prove unpopular with the public.

For Browning, who was deployed to Iraq in 2008, the nature of the U.S. role is clearly different.

“Whereas before it was me leading fights and I would ask my Iraqi partners to come with me, now… he leads the fight and I follow him,” he said. “The biggest difference is that we are no longer in a combat role.”

Since the Mosul offensive began last October, the U.S. role has evolved so that American forces are now partnered with Iraqi troops at a lower level, reducing the time it takes them to respond to Islamic State.

That means company commanders under Browning are also partnered with brigade commanders who report to his Iraqi opposite number, Lieutenant General Qassem al-Maliki.

They hold daily discussions on operations and determine what U.S. forces can do to help, which may involve providing imagery, intelligence, air strikes, or ground fire.

The Iraqis also provide human intelligence that the U.S. forces will corroborate in order to identify targets and determine the best approach to attacking them.

Browning lives on the same base as Maliki, commander of the Iraqi 9th division, making it easier to finetune battle plans.

“Everything I am trying to do is try to shape the battlefield for him”.

(Reporting by Ahmed Aboulenein; Editing by Isabel Coles and Mark Trevelyan)

Iraqi forces gain foothold in northwest Mosul after surprise new push

Smoke is seen as members of the Iraqi Army clash with Islamic State fighters at a frontline in north west of Mosul, Iraq, May 5, 2017. REUTERS/Danish Siddiqui

By Isabel Coles

HULAYLA, Iraq (Reuters) – Iraqi forces pushed further into Mosul from the north on the second day of a new push to speed up the nearly seven-month attempt to dislodge Islamic State, commanders said on Friday.

Islamic State tried to block the troops’ northerly advance into their de facto Iraqi capital with suicide car bombs and sniper fire, Brigadier General Walid Khalifa, deputy commander of the 9th brigade, told Reuters in Hulayla, west of Musherfa.

His troops had killed about 30 militants, destroyed five car bombs before they could be used against them, he said.

U.S. air support has proved vital for spotting suicide car bombs and for avoiding targets where civilians are trapped.

Brigadier General Yahya Rasool, a spokesman for the joint operations command, told Reuters the militants “didn’t have time to make barriers, the advance since yesterday has been good”.

An army statement said the Second Musherfa district as well as the Church and Mikhail’s Monastery area had been retaken.

The U.S.-backed Iraqi forces’ new foothold aims to open escape routes for the hundreds of thousands of civilians trapped behind Islamic State lines and, in turn, help troops’ progress.

Rasool said Iraqi forces rescued 1,000 families on Thursday.

Footage taken by a drone operated by the Iraqi 9th Armoured Division over the northwestern suburb of Musherfa and seen by Reuters, showed the militants had scant defenses there, unlike in other parts of Mosul where streets are blocked by anti-tank barriers and vehicles.

U.S. Army Lieutenant Colonel James Browning, the partnered adviser to the 9th, said the militants had tried to keep some streets open in order to use suicide car bombs.

Islamic State was probably expecting the attack, he said, “but they can’t defend everywhere”.

Only two months ago, the militants would be firing 200 rockets or mortars at Iraqi forces in Mosul on any given day, Browning said, but in the past two days it dropped to about 30.

“When you open up more fronts it becomes harder for (Islamic State) to be able to defend. There are certainly some challenges. There are defenses in place,” he told Reuters.

WHITE FLAG

Islamic State had taken up positions in the homes of civilians in Musherfa, said one man who came out of Mosul carrying his handicapped son.

“They knocked on our door but we did not open it. When the army came we raised the white flag,” he said.

He was among several dozen people walking out of Musherfa with the full beard that Islamic State makes men grow in places where it holds power.

The 9th Armoured Division and the Interior Ministry’s Rapid Response units are aiming for the Tigris river bank to complete their encirclement of the Islamic State-held Old City center.

Their progression should help the elite Counter-Terrorism Service (CTS) and Interior Ministry Federal Police troops who are painstakingly advancing from the south.

The militants are now besieged in the northwestern corner of Mosul which includes the historic Old City, the medieval Grand al-Nuri Mosque, and its landmark leaning minaret where their black flag has been flying since June 2014.

Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi declared a “caliphate” spanning parts of Syria and vast swathes of Iraqi territory from the pulpit of the Grand al-Nuri Mosque nearly three years ago.

The Iraqi army said on April 30 that it aimed to complete the battle for Mosul, the largest city to have fallen under Islamic State control, in both Iraq and Syria, this month.

However, even defeat in Mosul would not be the end of the hardline Sunni group, which still controls parts of Syria and large amounts of Iraqi territory near the Syrian border.

(Reporting by Isabel Coles; Writing by Ahmed Aboulenein; Editing by Louise Ireland)

Islamic State militants developing own social media platform: Europol

By Michael Holden

LONDON (Reuters) – Islamic State militants are developing their own social media platform to avoid security crackdowns on their communications and propaganda, the head of the European Union’s police agency said on Wednesday.

Europol Director Rob Wainwright said the new online platform had been uncovered during a 48-hour operation against Internet extremism last week.

“Within that operation it was revealed IS was now developing its very own social media platform, its own part of the Internet to run its agenda,” Wainwright told a security conference in London. “It does show that some members of Daesh (IS), at least, continue to innovate in this space.”

During a Europol-coordinated crackdown on IS and al Qaeda material, which involved officials from the United States, Belgium, Greece, Poland, and Portugal, more than 2,000 extremist items were identified, hosted on 52 social media platforms.

Jihadists have often relied on mainstream social media platforms for online communications and to spread propaganda, with private channels on messaging app Telegram being especially popular over the past year.

Technology firms, such as Facebook and Google, have come under increasing political pressure to do more to tackle extremist material online and to make it harder for groups such as Islamic State to communicate through encrypted services to avoid detection by security services.

However, Wainwright said that IS, by creating its own service, was responding to concerted pressure from intelligence agencies, police forces and the tech sector, and were trying to found a way around it.

“We have certainly made it a lot harder for them to operate in this space but we’re still seeing the publication of these awful videos, communications operating large scale across the Internet,” he said, adding he did not know if it would be technically harder to take down IS’s own platform.

Wainwright also said he believed that security cooperation between Britain and the EU would continue after Brexit, despite British warnings it is likely to leave Europol and cease sharing intelligence if it strikes no divorce deal with the bloc.

“The operational requirement is for that to be retained. If anything, “If anything we need to have an even more closely integrated pan-European response to security if you consider the way in which the threat is heading,” he said.

Europe, he added, is facing “the highest terrorist threat for a generation”.

However, Wainwright said there were important legal issues that would have to be thrashed out and it was not easy “to just cut and paste current arrangements”.

“The legal issues have to be worked through and then they have to be worked through within of course the broader political context of the Article 50 negotiations (on Britain’s planned exit from the EU),” he said.

“In the end I hope the grown-ups in the room will realize that … security is one of the most important areas of the whole process. We need to get that right in the collective security interest of Europe as a whole, including of course the United Kingdom.”

(Additional reporting by Eric Auchard; editing by Mark Heinrich)

Families of San Bernardino shooting sue Facebook, Google, Twitter

FILE PHOTO: Weapons confiscated from the attack in San Bernardino, California are shown in this San Bernardino County Sheriff Department handout photo from their Twitter account released to Reuters December 3, 2015. REUTERS/San Bernardino County Sheriffs Department/Handout/File Photo

By Dan Whitcomb

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Family members of three victims of the December 2015 shooting rampage in San Bernardino, California, have sued Facebook, Google and Twitter, claiming that the companies permitted Islamic State to flourish on social media.

The relatives assert that by allowing Islamic State militants to spread propaganda freely on social media, the three companies provided “material support” to the group and enabled attacks such as the one in San Bernardino.

“For years defendants have knowingly and recklessly provided the terrorist group ISIS with accounts to use its social networks as a tool for spreading extremist propaganda, raising funds and attracting new recruits,” family members of Sierra Clayborn, Tin Nguyen and Nicholas Thalasinos charge in the 32-page complaint, which was filed in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles on Wednesday.

“Without defendants Twitter, Facebook and Google (YouTube), the explosive growth of ISIS over the last few years into the most feared terrorist group in the world would not have been possible,” the complaint said.

Spokeswomen for Twitter and Google declined to comment on the lawsuit. Representatives for Facebook could not immediately be reached by Reuters on Thursday afternoon.

Syed Rizwan Farook and his wife, Tashfeen Malik, opened fire on a holiday gathering of Farook’s co-workers at a government building in San Bernardino on Dec. 2, 2015, killing 14 people and wounding 22 others.

Farook, the 28-year-old, U.S.-born son of Pakistani immigrants, and Malik, 29, a Pakistani native, died in a shootout with police four hours after the massacre.

Authorities have said the couple was inspired by Islamist militants. At the time, the assault ranked as the deadliest attack by Islamist extremists on U.S. soil since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. In June 2016, an American-born gunman pledging allegiance to the leader of Islamic State shot 49 people to death at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida, before he was killed by police.

In December 2016 the families of three men killed at the nightclub sued Twitter, Google and Facebook in federal court on allegations similar to those in the California lawsuit.

Federal law gives internet companies broad immunity from liability for content posted by their users. A number of lawsuits have been filed in recent years seeking to hold social media companies responsible for terror attacks, but none has advanced beyond the preliminary phases.

(Reporting by Dan Whitcomb in Los Angeles; Additional reporting by David Ingram and Julia Love in San Francisco; Editing by Dan Grebler and Grant McCool)

Islamic State leader in Egypt tells Muslims to avoid Christian gatherings

CAIRO (Reuters) – Islamic State’s leader in Egypt has warned Muslims to stay away from Christian gatherings as well as government, military and police facilities, suggesting that the militant group will keep up attacks on what he referred to as “legitimate targets”.

In April, two Islamic State suicide bombers killed at least 45 people at churches in the cities of Alexandria and Tanta, one of the bloodiest attacks the country has experienced in years.

“We are warning you to stay away from Christian gatherings, as well as the gatherings of the army and the police, and the areas that have political government facilities,” the leader, who was not named, said in an interview in Islamic State’s Al Naba weekly newspaper published on Telegram.

Islamist militants are increasingly targeting religious minorities, a challenge to President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, who has promised to protect them from extremism.

Islamic State has been turning its sights on targets outside its base in the Sinai, putting more pressure on the government and presenting extra challenges for security services.

(Reporting by Mostafa Hashem; Writing by Maha El Dahan; Editing by Louise Ireland)

Mosul offensive gains fresh momentum as army attacks IS from northwest

A wounded displaced man is evacuated by Iraqi forces as he crosses the Tigris by a military boat after the bridge has been temporarily closed, south of Mosul, Iraq May 4, 2017. REUTERS/Suhaib Salem

By Ahmed Aboulenein and Ahmed Rasheed

SOUTHWEST OF MOSUL, Iraq/BAGHDAD (Reuters) – The U.S.-backed Iraqi offensive to take back Mosul from Islamic State gained fresh momentum on Thursday, with an armored division trying to advance into the city from the northern side.

The militants are now besieged in the northwestern corner of Mosul which includes the historic Old City center, the medieval Grand al-Nuri Mosque, and its landmark leaning minaret where their black flag has been flying since June 2014.

The Iraqi army’s 9th Armoured Division and the Rapid Response units of the Interior Ministry have opened a new front in the northwest of the city, the military said in a statement.

The attack will help the elite Counter-Terrorism Service (CTS) and Interior Ministry Federal Police troops who are painstakingly advancing from the south.

“Our forces are making a steady advance in the first hours of the offensive and Daesh fighters are breaking and retreating,” Brigadier General Yahya Rasool, a spokesman for the joint operations command, told state television. He was referring to Islamic State by an Arabic acronym.

Federal Police and Rapid Response forces advanced 1,400 meters and keep pushing ahead in the Hulela area toward the Haramat district northwest of Mosul. They were trying to reach the Tigris river bank and surround the Fifth Bridge north of the Old City, the Federal Police said in a statement.

A U.S.-led international coalition is providing key air and ground support to the offensive on Mosul, Islamic State’s de facto capital in Iraq, which started in October.

It was from the pulpit of the Grand al-Nuri Mosque that Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi revealed himself to the world in July 2014, declaring a “caliphate” that spanned parts of Syria and persecuted non-Sunni communities as well as Sunnis who did not abide by its extreme interpretation of Islam.

“An armored division should not be going into narrow alleyways and streets but we will,” said Lieutenant General Qassem al-Maliki, commander of the 9th Armoured Division.

“There are sometimes troop shortages or orders that require us to do so and we will do our duty,” he told Reuters in an interview at a base southwest of Mosul.

“We will enter with Rapid Response forces and CTS and we will enter as one front.”

The Iraqi army said on April 30 that it aimed to finish the battle for Mosul, the largest city to have fallen under Islamic State control in both Iraq and Syria, this month.

Islamic State’s defeat in Mosul will not mean the end of the hardline Sunni group which remains in control of parts of Syria and vast swathes of Iraqi territory near the Syrian border.

SHAPING THE BATTLEFIELD

Close U.S. support should help the involvement of the armored division and reduce the risk for civilians, U.S. Army Lieutenant Colonel James Browning, the partnered advisor to the Iraqi 9th Armoured Division, told Reuters at the base.

“Everything I am trying to do is try to shape the battlefield for him,” Browning, a battalion commander from the 82nd Airborne Division, said referring to Maliki.

“I am looking at trying to strike right in front of him as well as deep, even into Old Mosul.”

U.S. support is essential for getting rid of suicide car bombs, known as VBIEDs, driven by the militants as road torpedoes before crashing into troops.

A typical conversation between Browning and Maliki would go like this: “What are you seeing on the screen? Do you see civilians?” Browning recalls Maliki asking.

“And sometimes I say ‘yes’ and he (Maliki) says ‘don’t strike’. I go through that process every time. We scan, we take a look, we make sure,” Browning said.

The war is taking a heavy toll on civilians trapped behind Islamic State lines and used by the militants as shields.

Local officials and eyewitnesses have said as many as 240 people may have died in March in the Al-Jadida district of western Mosul when a blast resulted in a building collapsing.

The U.S. military has acknowledged that the U.S.-led coalition probably had a role in the March 17 explosion, but said Islamic State also could be to blame.

(Reporting by Ahmed Aboulenein southwest of Mosul and Ahmed Rasheed in Baghdad; Additional reporting by Isabel Coles in Erbil; Writing by Maher Chmaytelli; Editing by Ralph Boulton)

Five years, billions of dollars needed to rebuild Mosul: officials

Iraqis workers repair sewage line in eastern Mosul, Iraq May 2, 2017. REUTERS/Suhaib Salem

By Ahmed Aboulenein

MOSUL, Iraq (Reuters) – Mosul’s wrecked roads, bridges and broader economy will take at least five years to repair and need billions of dollars of development that Iraq’s government will struggle to afford, officials returning to the battle-scarred city said.

The airport, railway station and university were all destroyed in the long fight to dislodge Islamic State militants from their main Iraqi stronghold.

Iraqi government forces backed by a U.S.-led coalition have now retaken the eastern half of the city – letting regional councillors return for the first time in 2-1/2 years to survey the damage.

“After Mosul is fully liberated, we need a working plan to restore things to the way they were before 2014 when Islamic State took over,” Noureldin Qablan, deputy chairman of the council covering the surrounding Nineveh province, told Reuters.

He sat back in his office in the heart of Mosul, the province’s regional capital, an unremarkable building apart from its new concrete fortifications and the teams of armed guards surrounding it.

A gun lay on his desk, next to his phone and piles of paperwork.

Outside, bustling markets have sprung back into life on the eastern banks of the Tigris river. Over on the other side of the river, Islamic State fighters are holed in, defending the densely-populated Old City with snipers and suicide bombers.

At the heart of their territory sits the medieval Grand al-Nuri Mosque and its famous leaning minaret, where Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi declared his caliphate in July 2014. Experts fear the fragile brick structure could still succumb to the fighting raging around it.

Iraq’s army has said it expects to expel Islamic State from the rest of the city by May.

“WE ARE NOT GETTING ENOUGH SUPPORT”

The 34 Nineveh councillors, who have been meeting in other cities during the occupation, have already started drawing up plans to rebuild Mosul, though they are still were not sure where the money will come from, said Qablan.

For the first six months, local authorities would focus on restoring security, water, electricity and fuel, and on the return of those displaced by the war.

Under the plan, there would then be a two-year period of reconstruction and the initiation of a reconciliation process followed by 30 months focused on attracting investment and developing the economy.

Some of the early repair work could cost as little as $5,000 a house, Qablan said.

But even that would strain budgets that he said were under-funded by the central government in Baghdad.

“Honestly, we are not getting enough support. What has been allocated to Nineveh in 2017 was 52 billion Iraqi dinars ($44.5 million) which is a very small sum for a province this size,” Qablan said.

“In 2013 we were allocated 738 billion dinars, yet after all this destruction we get just 52. It is very hard to reach our goals with this sum, so we are counting on foreign grants.”

Council officials are in talks with the United Nations, international aid groups and friendly states, he said. Italy was already helping rebuild a hospital.

Outside on the eastern side of the river, foreign investment was already flowing back in, in the form of market stalls heaving with Turkish and Iranian fruit and vegetables, replacing the less plentiful Syrian produce that had dominated under Islamic State.

Tobacco shops, banned by the ultra-hardline Sunni Muslim group, have reopened.

Dozens of men sipped coffee or tea inside The Golden Cafe, looking at their phones and surfing the web – activities that Islamic State had limited to monitored internet centers.

“We are happy and comfortable. Life is good,” said one customer Emad, smoking hookah outside. “I feel out of this world.”

(Reporting by Ahmed Aboulenein; Editing by Maher Chmaytelli and Andrew Heavens)

Without school, children of Mosul feared lost to poverty and conflict

Falah, 11, sells vegetables and fruits in a market in eastern Mosul, Iraq April 20, 2017. REUTERS/ Muhammad Hamed

By Ahmed Aboulenein

MOSUL, Iraq (Reuters) – Ahmed Abdelsattar was 14 when Islamic State swept into Mosul and declared a caliphate in 2014. Fearing he would be indoctrinated and sent to fight by the militants, his parents took him out of school.

Three years later, he sells ice cream at a refugee camp for internally displaced Iraqis. His family have lost their home and his father is too old for the manual labor positions at the camp, which means he is his family’s sole breadwinner.

Coupled with a shortage of teachers, books and supplies, the 17-year-old sees no reason to go to the makeshift schools set up in the Khazar camp near Erbil.

“Going to school is now useless. I am helping my family,” he said. He adds that it is too late for him anyway. Had his education not been interrupted, Abdelsattar would be graduating in a few weeks.

Abdelsattar is one of tens of thousands of children orphaned or left homeless by the war on Islamic State and forced to work to support their families in Mosul, the militant’s last major city stronghold in Iraq.

Returning these children to school is a priority for Iraq to end the cycle of sectarian violence fueled in part by poverty and ignorance, the United Nations says.

“Investment in education is urgently needed, without which Iraq could lose an entire generation,” said Laila Ali, a spokeswoman for the UN’s children agency UNICEF.

“Children from different ethnicities and religions, in the same classroom, will promote a cohesive society and will get children to think differently.”

Even in the half of Mosul east of the Tigris River that has been retaken by Iraqi forces, where 320 of the 400 schools have reopened, Reuters interviewed dozens of children working as rubbish collectors, vegetable vendors or mechanics.

“I did not go to school because Islamic State came and they would teach children about fighting and send them to fight,” says 12-year-old Falah by his vegetable cart in Mosul.

Within earshot, fighting was still raging. Just across the river, government troops, artillery and aircraft were attacking Islamic State’s last stronghold in western Mosul.

Falah has four younger brothers. None of them have ever been to school.

ONE PLUS ONE EQUALS TWO

Huzayfa studied up to the fifth grade but stopped when Islamic State came. The militants taught math using bullets, rifles and bombs, said the 12-year-old, who sells scrap metal.

“They taught us ‘one bullet plus one bullet’ and how to fire weapons,” he said.

The local education department in Nineveh province, of which Mosul is the capital, estimates 10 percent of children in east Mosul are still out of school. There has been no official count for almost four years, it said.

There are also no official statistics on the dropout rate, a spokesman for Iraq’s Education Ministry said, especially as many families have fled Mosul or Iraq altogether.

“We are counting on parent-teacher conferences and local officials to convince parents to send their kids back to school,” said Ibrahim al-Sabti.

Government funds normally allocated to education have been depleted by corruption and mismanagement, lawmakers and non-governmental organizations say, citing the results of investigations in 2014 and 2016.

Oil-rich Iraq historically had very high literacy rates and primary school enrolment was 100 percent in the 1980s.

Illiteracy became rampant after international sanctions were imposed due to the August 1990-1991 occupation of Kuwait. Economic hardship was made worse by the civil war that broke out after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein.

LOST FUTURE

Schools in east Mosul started reopening in January and so far around 350,000 students are back in class, compared to 183,229 in 2013, with much of the increase due to displaced people from west Mosul and surrounding villages.

UNICEF estimates around 1.2 million Iraqi children are not in school nationwide.

The Iraqi military expects to dislodge Islamic State from the rest of Mosul in May but the militants are mounting a strong resistance in the densely populated Old City.

Iraqi troops began their offensive in October backed by a U.S.-led international coalition providing air and ground support. The militants are fighting back using booby traps, suicide motorcycle attacks, sniper and mortar fire and sometimes shells filled with toxic gas.

For children like Ahmed Abdelsattar, whether or not the group is finally ousted from Mosul has little bearing on their fate.

If he is lucky, he will return to where his home used to be in western Mosul’s Al-Jadida district, an area where local officials and eyewitnesses have said as many as 240 people may have died in March when a building collapsed after a blast, burying families inside.

“The future is lost,” he said with an air of resignation.

(Reporting by Ahmed Aboulenein; Editing by Sonya Hepinstall)

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