ISIS militants in the Mosul area are forcibly recruiting child soldiers and abducting civilians for possible use as human shields, the UN said today.
The Islamic State group is fighting to hold Mosul as Iraqi forces and allied Kurdish troops squeeze in from all directions with U.S.-led coalition support, mostly from airstrikes and reconnaissance.
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More than 1 million civilians are stuck in the city, complicating the military’s efforts to advance without harming innocents. IS militants have driven thousands of them deeper into the city’s built-up areas, presumably for use as human shields, while hundreds of others have fled in the past days toward government-controlled territory despite the uncertainty of resettlement in displacement camps.
“They’ve been knocking on people’s doors and asking for their boys,” UN human rights spokeswoman Ravina Shamdasani said.
“Also on Wednesday, ISIL reportedly used loudspeakers to order the residents of Lazaghah and Arij villages, about 5 km from Hammam al-Alil city center, to leave their villages or be severely punished.”
READ MORE: Iraqi forces enter fierce fighting on eastern outskirts of Mosul
She added that the militants killed 180 former Iraqi government employees around Mosul, as well as 50 of its own fighters accused of desertion.
Heavy fighting erupted in the eastern neighborhoods of Mosul on Friday as Iraqi special forces launched an assault deeper into the urban areas of the city and swung round to attack Islamic State militants from a second entry point, to the northeast.
WATCH: Iraq’s special forces move into Mosul for first time in two years
Columns of armored vehicles wound through open desert to open the new front, pushing through dirt berms, drawing heavy fire and calling in airstrikes to enter the middle class neighborhoods of Tahrir and Zahara. The area was once named after former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.
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Now the Iraqi forces are gearing up for urban warfare expected to take weeks, if not months, as they work their way neighborhood by neighborhood, going through a warren of dense buildings prone to booby traps and ambushes.
Mosul is the last major IS stronghold in Iraq, and expelling the militant group from it would be a major blow to the survival of its self-declared “caliphate” that stretches into Syria.
— With files from Reuters and the Associated Press
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