About 600,000 people remain in the areas of western Mosul held by the "Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant" (ISIL), including 400,000 who are "trapped" in the Old City under siege-like conditions, AFP reported Thursday (March 23rd).
"They are desperate for food. They are panicked," Bruno Geddo, who represents the UN refugee agency in Iraq, told reporters in Geneva by phone from a transit centre for displaced people near Mosul.
He said people arriving at the Hamam al-Alil transit centre about 20 kilometres south of Iraq's second largest city described the desperate situation they left behind.
"There is a shortage of fuel, of food, of electricity. People have resorted to burning furniture, old clothes, anything they can use to keep warm at night, because it is still raining heavily and the temperatures at night in particular drop significantly," he said.
Around 600,000 people remained in the 60% of west Mosul still under ISIL control, he said, but that number was constantly changing as people fled.
