Major Efforts Needed to Bring Life in Mosul Back to Normal: Official



MOSUL —
Iraqi Ministry of Migration and Displacement calls on all other Iraqi ministries to put best efforts into repairing the liberated areas of west Mosul, providing security for all local residents.

The Ministry released a statement on Wednesday, urging all ministries and authorities to make best efforts to return life back to normal in the western side of the city. The statement further added that the residents of western Mosul cannot continue staying at the emergency camps, while most of the districts have been liberated months ago.


Earlier in June, the ministry estimated the number of Iraqi civilians displaced from the province of Nineveh since October 2016 to be 819,000, 642,000 of who came from western Mosul, IraqiNews reported.


Captain Jabbar Hassan from the Iraqi army said troops of the Iraqi army’s elite Counter-Terrorism Service (CTS) evacuated 360 civilians from the vicinity of the Grand Nuri Mosque on Tuesday.

However, Hassan pointed out there are certain difficulties with the evacuation process in western Mosul, as the Islamic State (IS) militants trap hundreds of civilians inside houses using then as human shields.


The large number of civilians remaining in Mosul's Old City, makes the liberation of the last IS-held district significantly challenging for the Iraqi forces. Despite the hundreds of thousands of civilians who have left the city since the start of the military operation, more than 100,000 civilians remain trapped in the Old City.

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