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Life in the Bullets: Families on the Front Lines in Mosul

by Heather Murdock

   MOSUL SUBURBS, IRAQ --

   In the outskirts of Mosul, bullets and mortar fire are nearly constant
   by day, and the occasional sound of an airstrike or a car being hit by
   a rocket makes no one look up.
   Civilians still live in the area, some having fled the inner city in
   recent days, with no desire to move into the rapidly filling refugee
   camps just outside the war zone.

   In the surrounding countryside, refugee camps are quickly filling up as
   construction workers race to build more in Khazir, Iraq, Nov. 9, 2016.
   (H.Murdock/VOA)

   About 200 meters from the last suicide car bomb attack he has
   witnessed, Noaaf Zanoon lives with his family in a home someone else
   abandoned when they fled. In a nearby field of dust, the bodies of two
   IS soldiers now rot where they fell.
   "Our house was shaking," he tells us, offering us some of the lunch
   Iraqi soldiers had just handed him. When asked about what it is like
   living with the constant sound of battle, he laughs. In the relative
   safety of the outskirts of the city, he's not afraid of the bullets.
   "Islamic State fighters would come into our home and fight from inside
   it or right in front of it," he says. "Sometimes they run from home to
   home to try to get the army to shoot the people."

   Plumes of smoke mark the heart of the battles in Mosul's inner city,
   taken from the suburbs on 12 Novermber 2016 (H.Murdock/VOA)

   Commanders say three more Mosul districts have been recaptured from
   Islamic State militants but the fight is slow going because IS's most
   powerful weapon at the moment is human shields.
   "The biggest challenge we face is the presence of civilians because
   there are so many," explains Lt. General Abdulwahab al-Saady, who
   commands counterterrorism forces from the front lines, at a base about
   two kilometers from where plumes of smoke mark the fighting in the
   inner city. "Some of these people are staying in their houses and
   refuse to leave."

   Iraqi Army leaders including Lt. General Abdulwahab al-Saady, who
   commands counterterrorism forces from the frontlines plan operations
   from the Mosul suburbs, Iraq, Nov. 12, 2016. (H.Murdock/VOA)

   About 10 minutes later, a rocket hits a car soldiers say was rigged as
   a suicide bomb, another common IS military tactic, less than 300 meters
   away.
   Downstairs, a constant stream of families pack into military trucks
   after fleeing the nearby violence. One man is held back because he is
   carrying a piece of IS-approved identification.
   "IS was shooting at us as we ran away," says 14-year-old Mashara, who
   is still wearing a black veil as required by IS. We ask her and other
   women if they are wearing their veils by choice.
   "No, they made us," says one woman as she boards the crowded truck. "We
   have just kept them on so people don't take our pictures."
   Guarding Civilians Complex
   On the dusty fields and amid the rubble, civilians who aren't moving
   farther from the battle search for basic supplies, like wheat. Many
   carry white flags as they walk to declare that they are not IS escaped
   from their front line, a tactic commonly employed, as civilian vehicles
   stream out of the war zones, also bearing white flags -- or rather
   white cloth tied to sticks -- but not perfect, say some civilians.
   "The militants sometimes hang white flags too," explained Nadia Mustafa
   as she waited to get onto an Army bus to a refugee camp last week with
   a group of women all veiled in black. A few days later we meet her
   again at the camp, now unveiled and grinning in a pink headscarf.
   Even people fleeing, she says, are sometimes infiltrated by IS
   militants and caught as they are screened at checkpoints and refugee
   camps. The International Organization for Migration says nearly 50,000
   people have fled their homes as the Mosul offensive ends its forth
   week.
   "There were two militants wearing veils among the women we came with,"
   she says. "They were wearing makeup and everything."