Some 60,000 people displaced after 1 month of operations to retake Iraq's Mosul: UN

After one month of military operations to retake Iraq's Mosul from the Islamic State (IS), almost 60,000 people have been registered as displaced and this number went up every day, a UN spokesman said here Friday.

"A critical priority for humanitarian organisations is to ensure that camp capacity keeps pace with the growing displacement," Farhan Haq, the deputy UN spokesman, told reporters here, citing the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).

Some 45,000 people were already accommodated in camps and a further 47,000 displaced people can be accommodated in camps, he said, adding that construction at other sites was accelerating to create capacity for an additional 453,000 people.

"Up until now, emergency response missions close to the front lines have reached over 69,000 people with emergency food, water and basic hygiene items," he said.

In terms of funding of the response, as of Nov. 17, 183 million U.S. dollars had been confirmed for the Mosul Flash Appeal, representing 65 percent of the 284 million dollars requested.

Humanitarian partners were also seeking funding for the 2016 Iraq Humanitarian Response Plan, which was launched in January. The plan requests 861 million dollars to support 7.3 million vulnerable Iraqis across the country.

To date, 69 percent of this requirement has been received, Haq said.

On Oct. 17, Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, who is also the commander-in-chief of the Iraqi forces, announced the start of a major offensive to retake Mosul, the country's second largest city, in a bid to liberate the northern Iraqi city, the last major Islamic State (IS) stronghold in Iraq.

Mosul, some 400 km north of the Iraqi capital of Baghdad, has been under IS control since June 2014, when Iraqi government forces abandoned their weapons and fled, enabling IS militants to take control of parts of Iraq's northern and western regions. Endit