Islamic State fighters forced women, children and the elderly to walk alongside them for days as human shields to cover their retreat to Mosul, separating out older boys and fighting-aged men along the way for an unknown fate, villagers said.
Reuters spoke to a woman and an elderly man inside the Islamic State-held city, who were part of group of families forced to leave the villages of Safiya and Ellezaga, about 30km and 50km to the south.
Children and the elderly were released when they arrived in Mosul on Tuesday and told to stay with relatives, they said, speaking by phone from one of the few places where there is still mobile coverage, on the city’s edges.
A resident of Mosul, Rayyan, said he saw the families when they arrived in the city, “their bare feet bleeding and covered with dust as if coming from under the rubble.”
“We cried when we saw them,” he said.
Reuters could not independently verify the villagers’ accounts, but they echoed reports from advancing Iraqi forces that Islamic State fighters have been taking civilians with them as they pull back towards the city.
Mosul is by far the largest city Islamic State fighters have ever held and now the group’s last stronghold in Iraq.
The ground offensive, now 11 days old, is expected to be the biggest battle in Iraq since the US-led invasion in 2003.
Islamic State, also known as Daesh, ISIS or ISIL, has a history of seeking protection by holding civilian hostages in other cities its fighters have defended.
For the men, the walk ended in Hammam al-Alil, a town about 15km south of Mosul where Iraqi officials say Islamic State is killing former members of the police and army who had lived in areas under its control.
They haven’t been heard of since, their relatives said.
“The members of Daesh called on the population of the village to gather in the school from the mosque’s loudspeakers,” said the woman, who gave her name as Fatima.
“Then they separated the women, the elderly and the boys over 14 from the families,
and made us walk to Mosul.
“One of them was shouting: ‘Quick, quick, otherwise the unbelievers will kill your children and rape your women’,” she said. “Another was repeatedly warning that anyone caught making a phone call would be shot dead.”
Abu Ahmed, in his early sixties, said the militants didn’t use cars in their retreat, fearing air strikes.
He walked with his daughters and his grandchildren from Ellazaga, sleeping two days in the open.
The militants took away one of his sons.
“We know nothing about him, he said, and we’re worried that he could have been executed.”
As many as 1.5mn people are still believed to be trapped inside Mosul, and the United Nations fears for a humanitarian disaster, forecasting up to 1mn could be uprooted and thousands of others held in peril by the militants.
UN human rights spokesman Rupert Colville said earlier in the week that Islamic State fighters had reportedly killed scores of people around Mosul in the last week.
Colville said security forces discovered the bodies of 70 civilians a week ago in houses in Tuloul Naser village, further south from Hammam al-Alil.
Islamic State also reportedly killed 50 former police officers outside Mosul on Sunday, he said.