500 refugees fear return to Diyala
Diyala (IraqiNews.com) Five-hundred refugee families in Diyala are wary of returning home due to past blood feuds as old as ten years, according to a local source.
“A tribal blood feud dating back to 2006 is preventing 500 refugee families from returning home in Khailaniya (47 km northeast of Baqubah),” Alsumaria News quoted the source as saying, on condition of anonymity.
“Government, political, tribal and security leaderships have made tremendous efforts for months to resolve the tribal feud and return the displaced families home after they had spent more than two years at refugee camps in Khanqin (105 km northeast of Baqubah), where they live in miserable conditions.”
Violence between 2006 and 2008, as well as that which erupted with the rise of the Islamic State in 2014, ignited bitter tribal feuds at some regions, especially in Diyala’s town of Maqdadiah.
Hundreds of thousands of refugees have been displaced since ISIS took over several provinces in Iraq in 2014. The United Nations has recorded at least 73000 refugees from the city of Mosul alone as Iraqi troops continue six-week-old operations to liberate the city from the extremist group.
Mosul hospital unable to admit more civilians
Nineveh (IraqiNews.com) The only field hospital erected by Iraqi government troops in Mosul has become unable to admit more injured civilians as Islamic State militants continue to shell areas they have lost to the advancing troops, Anadolu Agency reported.
According to doctors, the hurdle coincides with inability by Iraqi forces to storm several districts of Mosul as militants rely on booby-traps, snipers to heold off the troops, and a network of underground tunnels to facilitate their movement.
Mohamed al-Sawwas, a doctor at the makeshift facility in the town of Kokajli, was quoted by Anadolu Agency as saying that ISIS has been “relentlessly” bombarding densely-populated recaptured areas with mortar and artillery missiles.
He revealed that the hospital has become “unable to admit more injured persons after they reached 80 cases in a few hours late Saturday,” noting that many of those are suffering “very serious” wounds.
According to Sawas, “The hospital has run out of medical appliances, such as sterilizers and first-aid medicine,” which made medical workers helpless with cases that require medium or high-risk surgeries.
The United Nations and other refugee assistance bodies have recently warned that refugees from Mosul continue to suffer difficult living conditions that exacerbated with rainfalls at al-Khazir and Hassan Sham camps near Mosul. Food and water shortages are also biting people who remain in the city, with the main water pipe feeding the city damaged in battles, coupled with electricity cuts.
Iyad Rafed, a member of the Iraqi Red Crescent Society, was quoted on Saturday as saying that refugees started to set up sand barriers to prevent water from seeping into their tents.
ISIS executes prisoner in Damascus
[ARA News] Damascus – Islamic State’s (ISIS) jihadists on Sunday executed a Syrian rebel fighter in the Qalamoun District in Damascus suburb.
The fighter was captured during clashes between ISIS and Syrian rebel groups in Qalamoun.
Ahmed Abdulkarim al-Hayik, a fighter of the Free Syrian Army (FSA), was executed by ISIS militants on charges of ‘fighting against the Caliphate’.
“Al-Hayik was a member of the Ahmad Alabdo Battalion of the FSA. The battalion has been in fight with ISIS militants in the district for months,” local media activist Wassim al-Doghmush told ARA News.
“By executing al-Hayik, ISIS tried to send a massage to the FSA factions that it’s still in control of major parts of the Qalamoun area and is capable of imposing its version of the Sharia law,” Doghmush said.
ISIS lure Raqqa civilians into ranks with food rations
[Al Arabiya] ISIS in Syria’s Raqqa province have declared amnesty for those who are spying on the extremist group and turn themselves in, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported on Saturday, according to activists.
Activists spoke about ISIS’s attempt to seduce and lure civilians migrating from the northern part of Raqqa towards the occupied area by granting housing and salaries as well as food rations and electricity in return for their sons joining the militant group.
Earlier in November, a military operation launched under the name of “the wrath of the Euphrates” by the Syrian democratic forces in an effort to expel ISIS from its main stronghold in Syria. The battles have caused the displacement of more than five thousand people during the first few days, who passed from Ain Issa through a private passage monitored by the Syrian Democratic Forces, according to the operation’s spokeswoman in an interview to Agence-France Presse on November 10.
The SDF gained control of the dozens of villages and farms in early November, and is now 30 km from the city of Raqqa, according to the spokeswoman confirmed.
ISIS targeting civilians in Mosul’s al-Qadisiyah
[Al Arabiya] Sources close to Al Arabiya reported the deaths of dozens of civilians at the hand of an ISIS booby-trapped tanker that exploded on Saturday, in the newly-liberated Qadisiyah neighborhood east of Mosul.
Media sources indicated that the bomber driving a booby-trapped tanker blew himself up in the morning in the Qadisiyah neighborhood, killing at least 24 and wounding dozens more, including women and children. The sources added that the militant group targeted the civilian residents of the neighborhood for their cooperation with anti-terrorism forces.
Amid an imminent final military push to boot ISIS out of Mosul and the elation its residence for the deposition of the notorious militants, some are alarmed and expressed their skepticism and fear of likely violations and abuse by Iraqi military following its integration with the Shiite-led Popular Mobilization Units.
Iraqi Prime Minister, Haider al Abadi, announced in a statement published Friday, that the decisive battle against ISIS is looming soon, emphasizing that Iraqi army is advancing from all axis to restore Mosul. As the military offensive to drive out ISIS mount, more people are forced to flee the area, prompting the UN and aid agencies to warn of a humanitarian crisis, especially as winter increases the suffering of the displaced people living in refugee camps.