Over 250,000 Western Mosul Residents Accommodated in Refugee Camps

MOSUL (Sputnik) – More than 250,000 residents of western Mosul have been accommodated in refugee camps since beginning of the military operation aimed at liberating the city from the Islamic State (ISIL or Daesh) terror group, outlawed in Russia, Gen. Bashar Mustafa, member of Iraqi joint commission on aiding and accepting refugees, told Sputnik.

“Over 250,000 refugees from western Mosul have been accommodated at the camps by now. We expect arrival of 120,000 people more,” he said.

According to Mustafa, several thousand refugees arrive at the camps every day. He added that there were more than 20 refugee camps in the province of Nineveh as well as Iraqi Kurdistan.

On Friday, Mosul municipality chief Abdul Sattar Habbo told Sputnik that up to 500,000 people had fled Mosul since the start of the battle for the city while on Tuesday, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) said in a statement that cumulatively more than 367,000 individuals had been displaced by Mosul operations.

The Daesh terror group took over Mosul in June 2014. The operation aimed at liberating the city from terrorists started in October 2016. The eastern part of the city was liberated by Iraqi and US-led coalition forces in late January. In February, the Iraqi forces began the operation aimed at liberating western Mosul from the Daesh.

Iraqi President Fuad Masum told Sputnik in March that the humanitarian situation in Mosul was catastrophic, however, it would not be "sensible" to leave the city to terrorists.