Nearly 42k displaced since Mosul operation began: IOM

The International Organization for Migration (IOM) says nearly 42,000 people have left their homes in several areas since the start of the operation to liberate Iraq’s city of Mosul from the control of the Daesh Takfiri terrorist group.

Some 41,988 people have been "displaced as a result of the ongoing Mosul operations which began on 17 October 2016," the IOM reported on its displacement tracking webpage on Wednesday.

People from Mosul accounted for the vast majority of the figure that also included those displaced from other areas in northern Iraq.

The figure is over 7,000 people greater than the number IOM had recorded on Tuesday. The IOM attributed a significant part of that increase to new counts of people who were in camps.

On October 17, the Iraqi army, backed by volunteer fighters and Kurdish Peshmerga forces, launched an operation to retake Mosul, a strategic city in northern Iraq, from Daesh.

Iraqi troops managed to enter Mosul’s limits last week for the first time since June 2014, when the city fell to Daesh amid its terrorist campaign in northern and western Iraq.

So far, a large number of villages and districts surrounding the city have been cleared.

Aid organizations have warned that more than a million people could flee their homes due to the Mosul offensive.

The Takfiri terrorists have resorted to forcibly using civilians for possible use as human shields against the Iraqi forces.

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