UN, partners continue to aid Iraqi people in need amid fighting in Mosul

The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said that fighting continues in west Mosul and aid partners continue to aid the Iraqi people in need and respond to rising casualties and displacement, a UN spokesman told reporters here Wednesday.

"It is also providing assistance to families in newly-accessible areas," UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said at a daily news briefing here.

Nearly 1,700 people who have been injured have been received near the front lines, with more than 6,300 injured people having been referred to hospitals around Mosul since the start of military operations last October, he noted.

Since late February, 292,000 people have been forced to flee west Mosul, with 362,000 people uprooted by fighting in both east and west Mosul.

To date, emergency aid packages have been distributed to help 1.9 million people inside Mosul and surrounding areas.

For its part, the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) has opened a new camp in Iraq' s Hammam al-Alil to house thousands of newly-displaced people fleeing the fighting in western Mosul, said the spokesman.

The first 500 families began arriving today at the site, which has 2,500 tents ready to house more than 15,000 people. When construction is completed, the camp will have capacity for up to 30,000 people, Dujarric added.

Mosul witnessed a fighting between the Iraqi government forces and Islamic State (IS/Da'esh) terrorists.

The Iraqi government force's advance toward Mosul came after the Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi announced on Feb. 19 the start of an offensive to drive the extremist militants out of the western side of Mosul, locally known as the right bank of Tigris River which bisects the city.

Mosul, 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