18 December 2016, 13:59 GMT
GENEVA (Sputnik) — More than 104,000 people have been forced to flee the Iraqi city of Mosul since the start of a military operation to liberate it from the Islamic State (ISIL or Daesh) militants, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) said on Monday.
"17,404 families (104,424 individuals) currently displaced as a result of the on-going Mosul operations which began on 17 October 2016," the IOM said in a statement.
Most of the displaced people, 103,212, were residents of the Nineveh province where Mosul is located, while the city itself was left by 32,640 people, according to the organization.
15 December 2016, 16:09 GMT
Iraqi forces backed by the US-led coalition against the Daesh launched the operation to reclaim Mosul from the extremist group, outlawed in Russia and the United States among others, on October 17.
Mosul, the second biggest Iraqi city, as well as a number of other northern and western Iraqi cities and towns were seized in 2014 during an IS offensive.
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