The estimated 750,000 people living in militant-controlled west Mosul are in grave danger, the UN warned yesterday, 100 days into a massive Iraqi operation to retake the city.
“We are relieved that so many people in the eastern sections of Mosul have been able to stay in their homes,” UN humanitarian coordinator for Iraq Lise Grande said in a statement. “We hope that everything is done to protect the hundreds of thousands of people who are across the river in the west. We know that they are at extreme risk and we fear for their lives.”
On Oct. 17 last year, tens of thousands of Iraqi forces launched an offensive — Iraq’s largest military operation in years — to retake the nation’s second city from the Islamic State group.
Photo: Reuters
The going has been tough for federal forces as the Islamic State group has defended its last remaining major stronghold in Iraq fiercely. All central neighborhoods on the east bank of the Tigris River that divides the city have now been retaken and commanders are devising a strategy to tackle the western side of the city.
The slightly smaller western side is even more densely populated than the east and it is home to some of the militants’ traditional bastions.
All bridges over the Tigris in Mosul are unusable and the narrow streets of the Old City would make any military offensive into west Mosul a perilous operation both for Iraqi forces and civilians.
In most other urban battles Iraq has waged against the Islamic State group since it took over a third of the nation in 2014, cities had been almost emptied of their population by the time federal forces moved in, but in Mosul, while about 180,000 people have been displaced since the start of the operation, 550,000 residents also stayed in their homes.
Swedish campaigner Greta Thunberg was deported from Israel yesterday, the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs said, the day after the Israeli navy prevented her and a group of fellow pro-Palestinian activists from sailing to Gaza. Thunberg, 22, was put on a flight to France, the ministry said, adding that she would travel on to Sweden from there. Three other people who had been aboard the charity vessel also agreed to immediate repatriation. Eight other crew members are contesting their deportation order, Israeli rights group Adalah, which advised them, said in a statement. They are being held at a detention center ahead of a
A Chinese scientist was arrested while arriving in the US at Detroit airport, the second case in days involving the alleged smuggling of biological material, authorities said on Monday. The scientist is accused of shipping biological material months ago to staff at a laboratory at the University of Michigan. The FBI, in a court filing, described it as material related to certain worms and requires a government permit. “The guidelines for importing biological materials into the US for research purposes are stringent, but clear, and actions like this undermine the legitimate work of other visiting scholars,” said John Nowak, who leads field
NUCLEAR WARNING: Elites are carelessly fomenting fear and tensions between nuclear powers, perhaps because they have access to shelters, Tulsi Gabbard said After a trip to Hiroshima, US Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard on Tuesday warned that “warmongers” were pushing the world to the brink of nuclear war. Gabbard did not specify her concerns. Gabbard posted on social media a video of grisly footage from the world’s first nuclear attack and of her staring reflectively at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial. On Aug. 6, 1945, the US obliterated Hiroshima, killing 140,000 people in the explosion and by the end of the year from the uranium bomb’s effects. Three days later, a US plane dropped a plutonium bomb on Nagasaki, leaving abut 74,000 people dead by the
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is to visit Canada next week, his first since relations plummeted after the assassination of a Canadian Sikh separatist in Vancouver, triggering diplomatic expulsions and hitting trade. Analysts hope it is a step toward repairing ties that soured in 2023, after then-Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau pointed the finger at New Delhi’s involvement in murdering Hardeep Singh Nijjar, claims India furiously denied. An invitation extended by new Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney to Modi to attend the G7 leaders summit in Canada offers a chance to “reset” relations, former Indian diplomat Harsh Vardhan Shringla said. “This is a
RSS