UK Edition
Civilians fleeing Isil-held Fallujah were trapped on the bank of the Euphrates River on Sunday as families gave tragic accounts of watching relatives drown in its waters.
Around 50,000 civilians are trapped inside the Isil stronghold as Iraqi forces and allied militias prepare to storm the city.
Aid groups said on Sunday that a crowd was swelling along the river bank, waiting to cross to safety.
For Nuriya, a 50-year old mother of five, that journey ended in gut-wrenching tragedy. Separated from her family in the scramble to board a boat, the 50-year old watched helplessly as her daughter-in-law flailed in the water, losing hold of her children one by one.
“People jumped from the other side of the river and saved some of those who were drowning, but not my son’s two girls and his boy,” she said.
In a sign of the escapees’ growing desperation, the vessels have at times been fashioned from household items.
Reports last week suggested a toddler had drowned after her parents tried to send her to safety in an empty refrigerator.
The Norwegian Refugee Council said on Sunday that 4,000 civilians had fled Fallujah’s city centre in 24 hours and that more were expected to follow through the night.
Fallujah, which saw some of the heaviest fighting of the US-led military intervention, fell to Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant in January 2014.
US-trained Iraqi special forces are now within two miles of the group’s remaining fiefdom inside the city centre, but progress is being slowed by Isil’s extensive tunnel network and roadside bombs. Escapees say conditions inside the city are desperate.
“We’ve witnessed tragedies nobody should ever witness,” said one woman in the refugee camp supported by NRC. “We used to eat animal food.”
Supply routes to Fallujah were have largely been cut after government forces recaptured nearby Ramadi, the capital of Anbar governorate, and the desert to the north.
Reports in April suggested that more than 140 people had died from a lack of food or medicine. Nuriya’s son remained inside the city.
Recalling a phone conversation in which she broke news of his children’s death, she broke down in tears.
“I couldn’t even return his dead children to him. If we went we’d die of hunger, mortars and shelling. His poor children drowned hungry — they hadn’t eaten in two days.”
Iraq’s army said on Sunday it had secured the first “relatively safe” exit route, offering an alternative to flight across the Euphrates.
Iraq’s army is receiving support from Shia militias. Hundreds of civilians are believed to have been tortured after being captured by the militiamen, with reports of “broken” corpses being found.