Nearly 73,000 Iraqi people displaced from Mosul operations, UN relief agency says

The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reported that current displacement in the context of the Mosul military operations in Iraq has reached nearly 73,000 people, UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric told reporters here Friday.

The latest recorded displacement is the arrival of some 1,200 families in the Namrud area to the southeast of Mosul, the spokesman said.

On Nov. 24, an inter-agency distribution by the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF), the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) and the World Food Programme (WFP) provided humanitarian assistance to 5,000 families, including newly displaced families, in 16 villages in Namrud area.

WFP reported that since the onset of the Mosul operation on Oct. 17, the UN food agency and its partners have provided ready-to-eat food to more than 196,000 people affected by the conflict, the spokesman noted.

"There are reports of displacement around Tel Afar amid heavy fighting in the area," he said.

A UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) camp at Amalla, north of Tel Afar, is ready to receive more than 3,000 displaced families, he said. "So far, no displaced families from Tel Afar have arrived at the camp."

The majority of the displaced are from Mosul district, and most of them, almost 98 percent of the displaced, are currently residing within the Ninewa governorate, the spokesman added.

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. Enditem