Scale of civilians fleeing Iraq's Mosul 'staggering' – senior UN relief official

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UNITED NATIONS. KAZINFORM Noting that nearly half a million people have fled Mosul since the start of military operations to retake the city from Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL/Da'esh) terrorists, a senior United Nations humanitarian official in Iraq warned that the scale of the displacement has stretched relief efforts to their "operational limits".    

"Our worst case scenario when the fighting started was that up to one million civilians may flee Mosul. Already, more than 493,000 people have left, leaving almost everything behind," Lise Grande, the Humanitarian Coordinator for Iraq, said in a news release issued by the UN Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).

"The sheer volume of civilians still fleeing Mosul city is staggering [...] we are doing everything we can but this has been a long battle and the assault on the old city hasn't started," she added.

According to estimates, as many as 500,000 people still remain in ISIL-controlled areas in western Mosul, including about 400,000 in the densely populated old city.

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