Iraqi forces stormed al-Iqtisadiyeen neighbourhood in west Mosul on Thursday (May 11th) after it wrested control of two new districts with support from the coalition, the Ninawa Operations Command said.

"Iraqi forces have retaken various portions of al-Iqtisadiyeen neighbourhood, and have in the process freed dozens of Iraqi families and evacuated them to safe areas," command spokesman Lt. Gen. Abdul Ameer Rashid Yarallah told Diyaruna.

The storming of al-Iqtisadiyeen came following the recapture of the 30 Tamuz and Mashayrfa districts from the "Islamic State of Iraq and Syria" (ISIS), he said.

Meanwhile, ISIS elements preparing for a desperate last stand in Mosul are booby-trapping homes with civilians inside and welding doors shut on starving families to prevent the population from fleeing, AFP reported.

"ISIS came to our house and welded the door. They gave us a small amount of water and a white cloth and said: 'Here's a shroud for you'," said one resident of Zinjili neighbourhood.

The woman sent a voice message to a relative living in the "liberated" eastern side of Mosul and said she was now trapped in her own house with her husband, her four children and no food.

A senior officer of the Interior Ministry's elite Rapid Response forces said they had also found several families stuck in booby-trapped homes since the launch last week of an operation in north-western Mosul.

"We found eight such houses, where our EOD (ordnance disposal) teams were able to defuse the devices and get the families out," he said.