Displacement sites receiving families displaced by Mosul fighting

As military operations is going on in west Mosul, a city in north Iraq, displacement sites to the south of the city start to receive families who fled the fighting, a UN spokesman told reporters here Wednesday.

Eighty-two families with around 500 people were received at an emergency displacement site in Qayyarah, some 60 kilometres south of Mosul, on Tuesday evening, UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said at a daily news briefing here.

"Displacement is expected to increase significantly as the operation progresses," the spokesman said.

In addition to the expansion of camp and displacement site capacity, humanitarian preparations for west Mosul include the expansion of surgical and trauma care capacities: health partners are working to open four field hospitals close to Mosul city, and are setting up two additional trauma stabilisation points, bringing the number of trauma stabilisation points close to Mosul city to five.

Emergency kits of food, water and basic hygiene supplies are being pre-positioned close to displacement areas for the 250,000 to 400,000 civilians who may flee from fighting in western Mosul, he noted.

Humanitarian partners have also pre-positioned 59,000 tents, and 77,000 emergency shelter kits, and 109,000 kits of essential non-food items, he added.

The Iraqi security forces on Sunday announced the commencement of a new phase of offensive to drive out the extremist militants of Islamic State (IS) group from its major stronghold in the western side of Mosul, the Iraqi military said.

Mosul, 400 kilometers 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 northern and western regions in Iraq. Enditem