The children, who have not yet gotten used to the new place after running for their lives are longing to return to their native homes. Amid the suffering and painful memories the children are trying to cheer themselves up by playing simple games with their friends.
However, the permanent threat to their lives has impacted their fragile psyche and many of them are afraid of even a small gathering of people and loud sounds, as they perceive them to be airstrikes or explosions.
A correspondent from Sputnik Turkey talked to the little children from Hazır camp in the neighborhood of Erbil, where refugees from Mosul have taken sanctuary for now.
Simor İsmail is a 7-year-old girl from Mosul’s district called İntisar. She together with her family came to the camp just two days ago.
“We together with my mother, father and seven brothers and sisters came to the camp two days ago in my father's car. It was very scary when we drove here from Mosul,” Simor said.
She said that there were continuous sounds of bullets and airplanes. Her father told them to stay brave and not be afraid.
“My mother, too, tried to calm us down. I was so afraid, I was crying a lot on the way. My mom was crying too,” Simor recalls.
She further said that back in Mosul she used to go to school but after Daesh attacked their city, almost all the schools had been shut down.
Similarly, Medine Zuher a 6-year-old girl said that she, too, went to school and dreamed of becoming a doctor.
Talking about why she together with her family had to flee Mosul, Medine said that when the coalition planes were conducting airstrikes on Daesh positions in Mosul, a bomb hit their home, which resulted in the death of her younger brother.
“If I was a doctor, maybe I could have saved my little brother Haidar,” Medine said stressing that she misses her home.
The Iraqi city of Mosul has been occupied by Daesh terrorists, since 2014.
On October 17, Iraqi Prime Minister, Haider al-Abadi, launched an operation to retake the city of Mosul. The operation began with the participation of 4,000 Kurdish Peshmerga fighters and 30,000 Iraqi soldiers backed by the US-led anti-terror coalition.