Mosul air strikes kill dozens of civilians: Iraqi officials

NEAR MOSUL, Iraq — Air strikes carried out in recent days have killed dozens of civilians in west Mosul, where Iraqi forces are battling jihadists, officials said on Saturday.

Both Iraqi aircraft and a US-led international coalition are bombing the Islamic State group in the Mosul area.

“There are dozens of bodies still under the rubble,” Bashar al-Kiki, the head of the Nineveh provincial council, told AFP.

Nawfal Hammadi, the governor of Nineveh, of which Mosul is the capital, said the coalition had carried out the strikes in the city’s Mosul al-Jadida area, killing “more than 130 civilians.”

“The Daesh terrorist organisation is seeking to stop the advance of the Iraqi forces in Mosul at any cost, and it is gathering civilians… and using them as human shields,” Hammadi told AFP, using an Arabic acronym for IS.

Displaced Iraqis from Mosul rest as they walk towards refugee camps on March 24, 2017, after fleeing their city during the government forces ongoing offensive to retake the city from Islamic State (IS) group fighters. (AFP/Ahmad Al-Rubaye)

Other officials said that hundreds of people had died in the strikes. It was not possible to independently confirm the tolls.

An Iraqi brigadier general said that strikes had damaged more than 27 residential buildings and that three of them were completely destroyed.

The officer, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that the strikes were carried out after IS targeted military aircraft and attacked Iraqi forces with sniper fire.

IS overran large areas north and west of Baghdad in 2014, but Iraqi forces backed by US-led air strikes have since retaken most of the territory they lost.

Iraqi forces launched the operation to recapture Mosul in October, retaking the east of the city before setting their sights on the smaller but more densely populated west.

Also Saturday Iraq’s ministry of migration and displaced said that more than 200,000 people have fled fighting in west Mosul since the operation to retake the area from jihadists was launched last month.

Displaced Iraqis, who fled their homes due to the ongoing fighting between government forces and Islamic State (IS) group fighters, are checked as they arrive on March 25, 2017, to be taken to camps as an ongoing operation against the jihadists continues in the city of Mosul. (AFP/Ahmad Gharabli)

“The number of displaced from the areas of the right bank (west side) of the city of Mosul has risen to 201,275 people,” the ministry said in a statement.

IS overran large areas north and west of Baghdad in 2014, but Iraqi forces backed by US-led air strikes have since retaken most of the territory they lost.

Iraqi forces launched the operation to recapture Mosul in October, retaking the east of the city before setting their sights on the smaller but more densely populated west.

The United Nations said Thursday that there were some 600,000 people still in west Mosul, 400,000 of whom are “trapped” in the Old City area under siege-like conditions.