Middle-east Arab News Opinion | Asharq Al-awsat

West Mosul Families Huddle at Home Terrified of Jihadists | ASHARQ AL-AWSAT English Archive 2005 -2017
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An Iraqi child stands outside a door in west Mosul, northern Iraq, on March 7, 2017, as Iraqi forces battle ISIS jihadists to further advance inside the city. AFP


Mosul- For two weeks, Yunis Mohammed and 17 relatives huddled terrified in the cellar of his west Mosul home as ISIS jihadists fought off advancing Iraqi forces outside.

“The jihadists would knock on the door but we wouldn’t open,” the 39-year-old mechanic says, finally sitting under a tree in the sunlight after Iraqi forces recaptured his neighborhood this week.

Mohammed’s family, including eight children, hid in the basement petrified that, if they made any noise, ISIS jihadists would storm in, he recounts.

“We’d give the children a sleeping potion to stop them from talking. If they had heard us, the jihadists would have abducted us to protect themselves,” he says.

When the jihadists were near, “we could hear their voices and we could hear them talking on their walkie-talkies,” he says, adding some ISIS militants “didn’t even speak Arabic”.

Other residents in the same district of Al-Danadan, which is now under Iraqi control, say they hid at home during the fighting, surviving off their food reserves.

“We couldn’t go outside because of the ISIS fighters,” Manhal, 28, tells AFP, without giving his second name.

“Those who went out were taken hostage. The fighting was very violent. Mortar rounds fell on our roof and inside our yard,” he says.

His neighbour Mohammed describes being caught between the warring sides.

“We were stuck in the middle. Open this window, and there’s the army. Open the other, and there’s ISIS,” he says.

Fighting has devastated their residential street, shattering the glass windows of its houses and blowing a gaping crater into the middle of the road.

Three entirely charred cars sit piled on top of each other, propelled there by a powerful blast.

“It was like an earthquake,” says Ahmed, who was holed up inside his home with his wife, two children and his 71-year-old father.

His garden wall lies in pieces, and segments of the tarmacked main street lie strewn all over his lawn, under a clothes line back in use.

The 35-year-old teacher points to a rectangular-shaped hole in a wall on his garden’s edge. ISIS militants “made openings between the houses” to slip from one to the next without being seen, he says.

His aged father approaches with slow steps, dressed in a traditional long grey robe. “It was dramatic. We were paralyzed by fear, especially the women. Our car burned,” he says, his voice breaking.

A neighbor emerges in a doorway, dressed in a thick black coat despite the spring heat.

“They took Karam and his family,” he says gravely, running prayer beads through his fingers. “We were surrounded by monsters.”

He and his neighbors are breathing a little easier after the years living under ISIS rule.

But a few streets down in the same neighborhood, ISIS snipers lie in wait on rooftops near the archeological museum retaken by government forces.

From time to time, the crackling of gunfire can be heard as a soldier darts across the road to tease the jihadists.