Tag Archives: Mosul

‘We want to be happy’: Iraqi violinist plays in Mosul as troops battle IS

Ameen Mukdad, a violinist from Mosul who lived under ISIS's rule for two and a half years where they destroyed his musical instruments, performs in eastern Mosul, Iraq, April 19, 2017. REUTERS/ Muhammad Hamed

By Ulf Laessing

MOSUL, Iraq (Reuters) – Amid the bombed-out ruins of an ancient site revered by both Muslims and Christians in Mosul, Iraqi violinist Ameen Mukdad on Wednesday held a small concert in the city he was forced to flee by Islamic State militants.

As Mukdad played scores he had composed in secret while living under the militants’ austere rule, explosions and gunfire could be heard from Mosul’s western districts where U.S.-backed forces are still battling Islamic State for control.

“This is a place for all, not just one sect. Daesh represents no religion but is an ideology that suppresses freedom,” Mukdad told Reuters, using a derogatory name for the militants. “Everything about Daesh is wrong.”

Mukdad, 28, fled Mosul after Islamic State fighters stormed his house and confiscated his instruments, deeming his music a violation of their hardline interpretation of Sunni Islam.

Wednesday’s hour-long concert marked his first return to the city that was overrun by Islamic State in 2014.

Mukdad said he chose the Tomb of Jonas, or Mosque of the Prophet Younis, as the site is known by Muslims, to symbolize unity.

“I want to take the opportunity to send a message to the world and send a strike against terrorism and all ideologies which restrict freedom that music is a beautiful thing,” he said.

“Everyone who opposes music is ugly.”

DEFYING ISLAMIC STATE

Mukdad advertised the concert venue and time on social media, a bold move in eastern Mosul at a time the militants still control the Old City across the Tigris river.

Soldiers guarding the venue, which lies near the ancient Nineveh ruins, at first refused access after the boom of a nearby rocket rang out, saying they could not guarantee the public’s safety. They later relented, and troops joined the applauding crowd.

“The performance was like a dream,” said Tahany Saleh, who as a woman was forced by the militants to cease her university studies.

“I wanted to come to give a message that war has not stopped life in Mosul,” she said. “You can see all this damage but still we still want to be happy, we want to listen music.”

Under Islamic State rule, entertainment was banned. But in defiance of the militants, Mukdad continued to play at home alone or quietly with a dwindling circle of fellow musicians, closing windows to avoid detection.

“I stopped playing because I was too afraid but Ameen kept going,” said Hakam Anas, one of his friends who founded a musical club with the violinist. “We tried persuading him that he could get easily killed, but he kept playing.”

One night the militants raided Mukdad’s house, taking his instruments and vowing to punish him. He escaped to Baghdad where he still lives.

In a sign of how nervous Mosul residents remain six months into the military operation to flush out Islamic State, just 20 people, mostly young men, attended the concert.

“This is what we young people need,” said Abdullah Thaier.

(Reporting by Ulf Laessing; editing by Richard Lough)

Iraq opens new Tigris bridge escape route for people fleeing Mosul

An Iraqi woman carries a girl as she walks along a pontoon bridge over the Tigris river on the outskirts of Hammam al-Alil, south of Mosul, Iraq, April 17, 2017. REUTERS/Andres Martinez Casares

By Ulf Laessing

MOSUL (Reuters) – Iraqi’s army has built a new pontoon bridge over the Tigris river south of Mosul, after flooding had blocked all crossing points, opening an escape route for families fleeing fighting between government forces and Islamic State.

On Friday, the army dismantled makeshift bridges linking the two parts of Mosul due to heavy rain, forcing residents leaving Iraq’s second-largest city to use small boats.

The city’s permanent bridges have been largely destroyed during a six-month military campaign to seize back Mosul from the Sunni Muslim Islamists, which overran it in 2014.

Long queues formed at the new bridge on Tuesday with families crossing in public buses, trucks and taxis.

Aid shipments also resumed to the Hammam al-Alil camp, southwest of Mosul, the main arrival point for people fleeing the fighting.

Deliveries from Erbil, located some 80 km (50 miles) east in peaceful Iraqi Kurdistan, where aid agencies are based, had stopped due to the flooding.

“Everything is back to normal,” said a spokeswoman for the U.N. refugee agency UNHCR.

Some 20,000 people have escaped from Mosul in the past four days, fewer than before due to the lack of transport, the UNHCR said in a report. Almost 330,000 people have fled Mosul since Iraq started an operation to expel Islamic State in October.

They were some of the around 400,000 people still in western Mosul where military forces are trying to dislodge the militants from the Old City.

Fighting continued in the Old City where heavy smoke could be seen from the area of the Grand al-Nuri Mosque, from where Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi declared a “caliphate” spanning parts of Iraq and Syria.

Aircraft, helicopter and artillery opened fire, while gunfire could also be heard at several positions of Iraq’s federal police near the Old City.

“They (Islamic State militants) carry out attacks on our defensive lines, but each time we repel them and they run away, leaving bodies of their dead fighters behind,” Lieutenant Colonel Hussein Lazim Zghayer said of the force’s 9th division.

“Minutes ago, they launched an attack and we responded by shelling them with mortar rounds, killing two of them and their bodies were left in front of our defensive lines,” he said.

Government forces, including army, police and elite counter terrorism units have taken back most of Mosul, including the half that lies east of the Tigris river.

The militants are now surrounded in northwestern Mosul, using booby traps, sniper and mortar fire against the assailants.

(Editing by Alison Williams)

Civilians trapped in Mosul could face worst catastrophe in Iraq conflict, U.N. warns

A smoke rises as Iraqi forces fight Islamic State militants in Mosul, Iraq, April 17, 2017. REUTERS/Marko Djurica

ERBIL, Iraq (Reuters) – The fighting in the Islamic State-held Old City of Mosul, where hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians are trapped, could turn into the worst humanitarian “catastrophe” in the war against the militants, the United Nations warned on Tuesday.

“If there is a siege and hundreds of thousands of people don’t have water and don’t have food, they will be at enormous risk,” U.N. humanitarian coordinator for Iraq Lise Grande told Reuters in a telephone interview.

“We could be facing a humanitarian catastrophe, perhaps the worst in the entire conflict,” she added.

Mosul, the largest city in northern Iraq, was captured by the ultra-hardline Sunni Muslim fighters in mid 2014.

Iraqi government forces have taken back most of it in a U.S.-backed offensive launched in October, including the half that lies east of the Tigris river.

The militants are now surrounded in the northwestern quarter including the historic Old City, using booby traps, sniper and mortar fire against the assailants.

(Reporting by Maher Chmaytelli)

Islamic State seeking alliance with al Qaeda, Iraqi vice president says

A member of the Iraqi rapid response forces walks past a wall painted with the black flag commonly used by Islamic State militants, at a hospital damaged by clashes during a battle between Iraqi forces and Islamic State militants in the Wahda district of eastern Mosul, Iraq,

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – Islamic State is talking to al Qaeda about a possible alliance as Iraqi troops close in on IS fighters in Mosul, Iraqi Vice President Ayad Allawi said in an interview on Monday.

Allawi said he got the information on Monday from Iraqi and regional contacts knowledgeable about Iraq.

“The discussion has started now,” Allawi said. “There are discussions and dialogue between messengers representing Baghdadi and representing Zawahiri,” referring to Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al Baghdadi and Ayman al Zawahiri, the head of al Qaeda.

Islamic State split from al Qaeda in 2014 and the two groups have since waged an acrimonious battle for recruits, funding and the mantle of global jihad. Zawahiri has publicly criticized Islamic State for its brutal methods, which have included beheadings, drownings and immolation.

It is unclear how exactly the two group may work together, Allawi said.

Islamic State blazed across large swathes of northern Iraq in 2014, leaving the Iraqi central government reeling. Baghdadi declared a caliphate over the territory the group controlled from the al-Nuri mosque in Mosul the same year, which also became a point of contention with al Qaeda.

Last October, Iraqi security forces and Shi’ite volunteer fighters, commonly referred to as the Popular Mobilization Units teamed up with an international coalition, including the United States, to drive Islamic State from of Mosul and the areas surrounding the city.

The group has been pushed out of the half of Mosul that lies east of the Tigris River, but Iraqi soldiers and their allies are now bogged down in tough fighting in the narrow streets of the Old City of Mosul, west of the river, according to Iraqi security officials .

Islamic State has used suicide bombers, snipers and armed drones to defend the territory under their control. The group has also repeatedly targeted civilians or used them as human shields during the fighting, according to Iraqi and American security officials.

The militant group has lost ground in Mosul but still controls the towns of Qaim, Hawija and Tal Afar in Iraq as well as Raqqa, their de facto capital in Syria.

Even if Islamic State loses its territory in Iraq, Allawi said, it will not simply go away.

“I can’t see ISIS disappearing into thin air,” Allawi said, referring to the group by a commonly used acronym. “They will remain covertly in sleeping cells, spreading their venom all over the world.”

(Reporting By Babak Dehghanpisheh, editing by Larry King)

Iraqi Christians return to ransacked town with fear and hope

A damaged statue of Jesus Christ is seen inside a church in the town of Qaraqosh, south of Mosul, Iraq, April 11, 2017. REUTERS/Marko Djurica SEARCH

By Ulf Laessing

QARAQOSH, Iraq (Reuters) – With Islamic State expelled, Iraqi Christians are trickling back to the ransacked town of Qaraqosh, beset by anxiety for their security and yet hopeful they can live in friendship with Muslims of all persuasions.

The town, about 20 km (12 miles) from the battlefront with Islamic State in the northern city of Mosul, shows why Christians have mixed feelings about the future of their ancient community.

In the desecrated churches of Qaraqosh, Christians are busy removing graffiti daubed by the Sunni Muslim militants during two and a half years of control – only for new slogans to have appeared, scrawled by Shi’ite members of the Iraqi forces fighting street to street with the jihadists in Mosul.

But nearby a shopkeeper is doing a brisk trade selling Dutch beer, Greek ouzo and several whisky brands to Christians, Sunnis, Shi’ites and Kurds alike, with this kind of commerce perhaps offering a glimpse of how Iraq’s fractured communities could again live together peacefully.

Encouraged by security checkpoints and patrols by a volunteer force, up to 10 Christian families have returned to what used to be the minority’s biggest community in Iraq until Islamic State seized it in 2014.

Iraqi forces pushed the group out of Qaraqosh in October, part of a six-month offensive to retake Mosul. But residents are worried that the Shi’ite slogans signal a new kind of sectarian division.

“Oh Hussein” is daubed in red on the wall of a church torched earlier by Islamic State, praising the hero of Shi’ite Muslims who was martyred 1,300 years ago.

“We are afraid of this, of tensions,” said Girgis Youssif, a church worker. “We want to live in peace and demand security,” said Youssif, who returned after fleeing to Erbil, about 60 km away in Iraqi Kurdistan.

Shi’ites in the Iraqi government forces and paramilitary groups, mostly from further south in the country, have scribbled such slogans on buildings all over Mosul too.

Soldiers have also hoisted the flag of Ali in the city and on their on military vehicles. Shi’ites regard Ali, the son-in-law of the Prophet Mohammed, and the prophet’s grandson Hussein as his true successors.

Two Shi’ite flags also fly over Qaraqosh.

Most Sunnis, who are the dominant community in Mosul, have shrugged off the Shi’ite slogans as the work of a handful of religious zealots but Christians take them as a signal that their future remains uncertain.

“Of course we are afraid of such signs,” said Matti Yashou Hatti, a photographer who still lives in Erbil with his family. “We need international protection.”

Those families who have returned to Qaraqosh – once home to 50,000 people – are trying to revive Christian life dating back two millennia. However, most stay only two or three days at a time to refurbish their looted and burnt homes.

“We want to come back but there is no water and power,” said Mazam Nesin, a Christian who works for a volunteer force based in Qaraqosh but has left his family behind in Erbil.

By contrast, displaced Muslims have been flocking back to markets in eastern Mosul since Islamic State’s ejection from that part of the city, despite the battle raging in the Old City across the Tigris river which is the militants’ last stronghold.

ALCOHOL SHOP

Numbers of Christians in Iraq have fallen from 1.5 million to a few hundred thousand since the violence which followed the 2003 toppling of Saddam Hussein. Many Baghdad residents who could not afford to go abroad went to Qaraqosh and other northern towns where security used to be better than in the capital, rocked by sectarian warfare after the U.S.-led invasion.

But with the arrival of Islamic State, residents abandoned their homes with some applying for asylum in Europe. Germany alone took in 130,000 Iraqis, among them many Christians, in 2015 and 2016. But most ended up in Erbil with relatives or in homes paid for by aid agencies.

Supermarkets and restaurants remain closed in Qaraqosh, with windows smashed and burnt furniture strewn across floors.

One of the few businesses to have reopened is Steve Ibrahim’s alcohol shop in the town center; in the absence of cafes it has become a meeting point for local people. “Business has been good so far. Everybody comes here to stock up,” said Ibrahim, who has just reopened the store with his father.

They lost everything when Islamic State, known by its enemies as Daesh, wrecked their business. Now they have invested about $400 to refurbish the shop – new tiles shine on the walls – and customers are coming from beyond the town and from across the communities.

“I sell drinks to Christians and Muslims alike,” he said. “Many people come from Mosul or other towns.”

Many of Ibrahim’s customers ignore Islam’s forbidding of alcohol consumption. While he was talking, a Sunni Muslim from eastern Mosul drove up to buy a bottle of whisky and four cans of beer, packed in a black plastic bag to hide his purchase from the eyes of more religiously observant Muslims.

“You couldn’t drink during Daesh. I am glad this shop is open again,” said the man who gave his name only as Mohammed, shaking hands with Christians enjoying an afternoon beer. “I still only drink at home.”

Later a Shi’ite from a village south of Mosul arrived to pick up drinks. “I come here twice a week. It’s the only shop in the area,” he said, asking not to be named, before driving off.

Even Ibrahim comes every day from Erbil, bringing by car supplies and fuel for the generator to power the fridges filled with cold beer. Then he drives back at night.

Whether more Christians can live permanently in Qaraqosh depends on whether the security forces win their trust.

Army and police have tried to ease fears by stationing soldiers in front of churches, and even helping Christian volunteers to set up a massive cross at the town’s entrance.

On Palm Sunday last weekend, soldiers escorted a procession in preparation for Easter, Christianity’s most important festival, and provided chairs for worshippers during Mass.

Some Christian policemen joined in, singing “Hallelujah” with civilians. But walking along rows of burnt out homes and supermarkets, others were still afraid.

“The security measures are not sufficient,” said Hatti, the photographer. “We want security to surround the town.”

(Click here, http://reut.rs/2ordbfj for a Photo essay on this story)

(Editing by David Stamp)

Packed Iraq morgue reveals toll of Mosul conflict

An Iraqi boy walks past a building destroyed during the fighting between Iraqi forces and Islamic states militants in Qayyara,

By Isabel Coles

QAYYARA, Iraq (Reuters) – Packed Iraq morgue reveals toll of Mosul conflict Doctor Mansour Maarouf dons a surgical mask as he approaches the morgue refrigerator and pauses before pulling open the door to an icy blast. “In the name of God,” he says out of respect for the dead.

Inside, around two dozen corpses lie on the floor: some in body bags, several wrapped in blankets and a few so torn to pieces they come in sacks.

Nearly all of them are victims of the ongoing battle to dislodge Islamic State militants from Mosul, around 60 km further north. On the deadliest day so far, 21 bodies arrived at the hospital in the town of Qayyara.

The morgue gives a sense of the heavy toll the conflict is taking on civilians, but also highlights the practical challenges of dealing with the dead when infrastructure is ruined and administration has collapsed.

Staff at the hospital, which is run by aid group Women’s Alliance Health International (WAHA), purchased the cable connecting the morgue fridge to the power supply themselves, and space is limited.

“They (the Iraqi health ministry) have promised to provide us with shelves to increase the capacity,” said the doctor.

Until recently, the only place in the province authorized to issue death certificates was the department of forensic medicine in west Mosul, which remains under Islamic State control.

That meant the dead had to be driven hundreds of kilometers to the cities of Tikrit or Erbil and often got held up at checkpoints on the way, if not turned back.

To resolve the issue, the Iraqi government has now authorized the hospital in Qayyara to issue death certificates, except when the victim’s identity or cause of death are unclear.

In those cases, the body is transferred to a new mortuary on the eastern side of Mosul, which is under the control of Iraqi security forces.

There, an autopsy is conducted if necessary, and the body is buried in a numbered grave so it can be found in future should someone come searching.

“We wait for a period (before burying the body), depending how full the fridges are,” said Dr Modhar Alomary, who is in charge of the morgue, the sound of outgoing artillery in the background.

Alomary declined to say how many bodies he had received.

Patients arrive at the hospital in Qayyara, Iraq April 6, 2017. Picture taken April 6, 2017. REUTERS/Suhaib Salem

BRINGING UP THE BODIES

It might seem that Alomary’s workload would decrease once the battle for Mosul is over, but he expects the opposite.

That is when the task will begin of uncovering the mass graves where Islamic State threw its opponents after executing them.

A sinkhole south of Mosul believed to be the largest site may contain as many as 4,000 bodies, according to Human Rights Watch.

One worker at the morgue knows the scale of Islamic State’s two and half year killing spree better than most. He was an employee at the morgue in Mosul when Islamic State overran the city in the summer of 2014 and kept working there until just over one month ago.

In that time, “huge numbers” of bodies passed through the morgue, he said, many of them civilians, former policeman and ex-soldiers killed by the militants. “Sometimes we got 20-25, 50 (bodies in a day).”

The militants, who assumed control of hospitals across Mosul and appointed an “Emir of Health”, did not allow the morgue workers to conduct autopsies on their victims.

As for Islamic State’s own dead, the morgue worker said he was forced to fabricate the cause of death on the certificates of Iraqi fighters slain in battle, such as “car accident”.

That, to him, was an indication the militants anticipated defeat and wanted to make life easier for the families of its Iraqi members after Islamic State.

Death certificates were not issued for foreign fighters because their only identity was a nom de guerre, he said.

During the battle for Mosul’s eastern half, the morgue worker said he had received the corpses of 72 militants in a single day, estimating a total of 2,000 had passed through in the three months it took Iraqi forces to rout them.

Iraqi forces are now struggling to dislodge Islamic State from a few remaining districts in the west of the city, and the morgue worker said comparatively few dead militants had been brought in up until the point he left: “The number of civilian casualties is greater,” he said.

Many civilians killed in Mosul have been buried in gardens by relatives who were not able to reach a graveyard during the fighting and now want to dig up their loved ones and give them a proper burial.

Two men came to ask Dr Alomary what they should do with the remains of several relatives who were among dozens of civilians killed in an air strike by the U.S.-led coalition on the western Mosul Jadida district last month.

“We buried them by the side of the road and want to bring them here,” one of the men said to the doctor, who advised him to wait for Iraqi forces to finish clearing the rest of the city.

The bodies must also be dug up to get an official death certificate, which will enable victims’ relatives to claim compensation from the government.

But unless the authorities keep watch, people could take advantage of the chaos to fake deaths — whether to escape justice, or simply start a new life.

(Editing by Anna Willard)

Babies starve as war grinds on in Mosul

Patients Iraqi children lie at a hospital run by Medecins Sans Frontieres in Qayyara, Iraq April 6, 2017. Picture taken April 6, 2016. REUTERS/Suhaib Salem

By Isabel Coles

QAYYARA, Iraq (Reuters) – The babies cry with hunger but are so severely malnourished that doctors treating them at a hospital in Iraq would make their condition worse if they fed them enough to stop the pangs.

Many of the starving infants are from Mosul, where war between Islamic State militants and Iraqi forces is taking a heavy toll on several hundred thousand civilians trapped inside the city.

A new, specialist ward was opened recently to deal with the growing number of children from Mosul showing signs of malnutrition as the conflict grinds on -– most of them less than six-months-old.

That means they were born around the time Iraqi forces severed Islamic State’s last major supply route from Mosul to Syria, besieging the militants inside the city, but also creating acute shortages of food.

“Normally nutritional crises are much more common in Africa and not in this kind of country,” said pediatrician Rosanna Meneghetti at the hospital, which is run by aid group Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) in Qayyara, about 60 km (40 miles) south of Mosul. “We did not anticipate this”.

So far, the number of cases recorded is below the level considered critical but it nonetheless highlights the hardship faced by civilians who are effectively being held hostage by Islamic State.

Iraqi forces backed by a U.S.-led coalition have retaken most of the city but are struggling to dislodge the militants from several districts in the west, including the Old City.

Residents who have managed to escape say there is almost nothing to eat but flour mixed with water and boiled wheat grain.

What little food remains is too expensive for most residents to afford, or kept for Islamic State members and their supporters.

FORMULA MILK SHORTAGE

In the ward, a team of doctors monitors the babies’ progress in grams, feeding them a special peanut-based paste that will gradually accustom them to eating and increase their weight.

On one bed lies a six-month-old boy weighing 2.4 kg – less than half the median weight for an infant of that age.

The diminutive patients are also treated for other diseases associated with malnutrition, which weakens the immune system, making them even more vulnerable.

“It’s a new thing in Iraq,” said MSF project coordinator Isabelle Legall. “Most of the (Iraqi) doctors have never seen it (malnutrition)”.

Part of the problem, Legall said, is a lack of tradition of breast-feeding among Iraqi mothers, who usually raise their babies on formula milk, which is now almost impossible to come by in Mosul.

Even if they want to breastfeed, many mothers find it difficult due to the physical and emotional strain of living in a warzone: “The mother is very stressed and can’t find much food herself so cannot produce so much milk,” Meneghetti said.

One of the mothers from Mosul told the doctors she had no option but to feed her baby sugar dissolved in water, yogurt, or a mixture of flour and water.

“All of this is because of Daesh (Islamic State),” said another mother, keeping vigil over her emaciated baby.

Some of the babies come from villages that were retaken from Islamic State months ago, pointing to a wider trend of food insecurity.

TWO PATIENTS TO A BED

On average, more than half the patients seen in the emergency room of the MSF hospital are under the age of 15, partly because there is a shortage of pediatricians in the area, so many children are referred there.

Signs on the doors of the portacabins that house different wards prohibit visitors from entering with weapons.

The pediatric ward is so full there are two patients to each bed, and most of the women’s wing is taken up by children recovering from war injuries such as broken limbs, burns and shrapnel.

Many babies are brought to the hospital with respiratory problems such as bronchiolitis and pneumonia -– most of them from camps for the displaced, where cramped conditions enable viruses to spread.

Two children buried under blankets are suffering from birth asphyxia which occurs when a baby’s brain and other organs do not get enough oxygen before, during or immediately after being born.

Meneghetti said their mothers had probably needed a surgical birth but were unable to reach a hospital so delivered at home and experienced complications.

Lying listless on another bed is a boy who was wounded by shrapnel when his father picked up a box of explosives, intending to move the danger away. It blew up in his hands, wounding them both along with several other family members.

The expression on eight-year-old Dua Nawaf’s face is haunting.

The girl suffered burns to the head and hands in an airstrike by the U.S.-led coalition that killed more than 100 people in the Mosul Jadida district last month, including both her parents.

“The family told me this morning that she (Dua) had some problems, especially in the night, so we are organising a mental health (assessment) for her,” Meneghetti said, reaching into her pocket for a balloon, which she inflated and gave to the girl.

Only the faintest hint of a smile appeared on Dua’s face.

(Editing by Angus MacSwan)

‘Fight to the death’: snipers slow down Iraqi forces in Mosul’s Old City

A machine gun is seen on the floor next to a map drawn to show distances, on the wall of a sniper's nest in a building controlled by Iraqi forces fighting the Islamic State in Mosul, Iraq, April 6, 2017. REUTERS/Andres Martinez Casares

By Ulf Laessing

MOSUL, Iraq (Reuters) – Taking aim through a telescope on his rifle, the police officer opened fire on an Islamic State sniper from the top floor of a tower in Mosul before quickly pulling back to take cover.

“Hit the sniper at the mosque,” his commanding officer told him as he aimed at his target in the Old City, one of the only districts still in the militants’ hands in their last major urban stronghold in Iraq.

Iraqi forces are trying to advance through the narrow, maze-like streets toward the symbolic al-Nuri mosque, where Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi declared a caliphate in 2014.

But progress is much slower than in the early phases of the campaign, during which government forces took nearly three quarters of the city within five months.

The front line has hardly moved in the past three weeks, and the militants, along with roughly 400,000 residents, are trapped inside a ring of Iraq troops.

The soldiers expect the militants to fight to the death.

“Daesh fighters are resisting on a professional level because they have no escape routes left,” said a second policeman Hussein Qassem, using an Arabic acronym for the militants.

“They are resisting until they are killed. God willing we will not leave any Islamic State fighters. We will fight till the end.”

But advances are hard-won and fragile.

On Thursday, members of the Federal Police co-leading the advance said it was not safe to go to Mosul museum, which they had retaken three weeks ago.

“There is a lot of sniper activity over there behind that building,” a third police officer said, pointing toward an area behind the museum about 100 meters (yards) away.

Just days ago, they had taken journalists to the museum, and other areas closer to the front line.

“It’s now only about snipers and car bombs,” said an officer deployed from a Baghdad unit, as gunfire rang out and soldiers took cover among troop carriers and Humvees behind piles of sand. “They don’t have many snipers but they move around.”

They now face an extra danger.

Late on Thursday, the militants shot down a helicopter providing air support for the Federal Police, the first aircraft downed by Islamic State over Mosul since the start of the U.S.-backed offensive in October.

(Editing by Louise Ireland)

After grueling journey, Mosul’s displaced find refuge in camp

Displaced Iraqi woman Farah Taha, 60, poses for a photograph with her three sons, her daughter-in-law, her six-month-old grandchild as well as the brother and sister of her daughter-in-law, in the family tent in Hammam al-Alil camp south of Mosul, Iraq March 29, 2017. Taha says she has been unable to find any work to support her family since fleeing their Mosul home. REUTERS/Suhaib Salem

By Ulf Laessing and Suhaib Salem

HAMMAM AL-ALIL CAMP, Iraq (Reuters) – The husband of Orouba Abdelhamid was killed in a rocket strike when Iraqi government forces arrived in her home city Mosul as part of the military campaign to expel Islamic State fighters.

The 31-year-old Orouba was then trapped at home for days as her district in western Mosul turned into a battle zone between the government and the militants defending their last stronghold in Iraq. She eventually managed to flee with her three children.

“No one is left for me over there so I came here … I cannot return to the house,” she told Reuters, sitting in the tent she shares with her brother’s family in the Hammam al-Alil camp, which is home to some 30,000 displaced people.

Orouba was eventually reunited with her brother in the camp after the two had little contact since Islamic State overran Mosul in June 2014 and banned mobile phones under their extreme version of Sunni Islam.

For a photo essay, click here: http://reut.rs/2nXPUBo

Those who have fled Iraq’s second largest city describe a grueling journey, where in some instances entire neighborhoods have left together, often at daybreak, sometimes under mortar shelling or air strikes.

Fathers covered their children’s eyes, neighbors helped carry the disabled, and men were often separated from their wives to be questioned by the Iraqi army manning the checkpoints around the city.

Like many others, Gorha Mahmoud said she and her family walked for 48 hours in the rain and cold before reaching Hammam al-Alil. They had to wait a further 24 hours at the entrance gate as there was no tent for them at first.

In the camp, a semblance of normality has returned for the families. Children over six attend morning classes, women carry out domestic chores while men look for work and food.

“Here life is normal. The aid is plentiful and the people are nice,” Orouba said.

The United Nations refugee agency said in March it had opened two new camps to host those fleeing the fighting in Mosul, adding 40,000 places to its existing facilities.

More than 302,000 people have left Mosul since the military campaign began in October, according to the International Organization for Migration. Around 30,000 people were displaced

last week alone.

Even worse, some 400,000 people are still trapped in western Mosul while the battles rage.

Mahmoud Abu Mohamed, who lives in a tent around the corner from Orouba after also fleeing from Mosul with his family, said the government needed to restore water in the city and remove dangerous debris from the fighting before people would return.

“If the water returns, everyone will go back,” he said.

(Reporting By Ulf Laessing and Suhaib Salem; Writing by Ulf Laessing; Editing by Marine Hass and Andrew Bolton)

Islamic State says U.S. ‘being run by an idiot’

Brooklyn man sentenced to 15 years prison over Islamic State support

CAIRO (Reuters) – Islamic State said on Tuesday the United States was drowning and “being run by an idiot”.

In the first official remarks by the group referring to President Donald Trump since he took office, spokesman Abi al-Hassan al-Muhajer said:

“America you have drowned and there is no savior, and you have become prey for the soldiers of the caliphate in every part of the earth, you are bankrupt and the signs of your demise are evident to every eye.”

“… There is no more evidence than the fact that you are being run by an idiot who does not know what Syria or Iraq or Islam is,” he said in a recording released on Tuesday on messaging network Telegram.

Trump has made defeating Islamic State a priority of his presidency.

U.S.-backed forces are fighting to retake Islamic State’s two biggest cities – Mosul in Iraq and Raqqa in Syria.

“Die of spite America, die of spite, a nation where both young and old are racing to die in the name of God will not be defeated,” al-Muhajer said.

Trump is examining ways to accelerate the U.S.-led coalition campaign that U.S. and Iraqi officials say has so far been largely successful in uprooting Islamic State militants in Iraq and Syria.

The loss of Mosul, Islamic State’s last major stronghold in Iraq, would deal a major defeat to Islamic State.

U.S. and Iraqi officials are preparing for smaller battles after the city is recaptured and expect the group to go underground to fight as a traditional insurgency.

(Reporting by Ali Abdelaty; Writing by Maha El Dahan; Editing by Alison Williams)