Tag Archives: Refugees

Traumatized civilians fleeing Syria’s Raqqa in droves: U.N. official

FILE PHOTO: Children walk at a camp for people displaced from fighting in the Islamic State stronghold of Raqqa, in Ain Issa, Syria June 14, 2017. REUTERS/Goran Tomasevic/File Photo

BEIRUT (Reuters) – Scores of civilians are fleeing Syria’s Raqqa traumatized, with families torn apart and conditions worsening as the battle to oust Islamic State intensifies, a senior U.N. official said on Thursday.

The number of people escaping has risen rapidly in recent weeks, Sajjad Malik, the U.N. refugee agency’s representative in Syria, told Reuters.

“They’re coming out really weak, thirsty, and frightened,” he said, after visiting several camps for the displaced in northeast Syria.

Under the banner of the Syrian Democratic Forces, an alliance of Kurdish and Arab militias is fighting to seize Islamic State’s base in Syria.

With air strikes and special forces from the U.S.-led coalition, the SDF pushed into Raqqa in June after advancing on the city for months.

Fighting since late last year has displaced more than 240,000 people in the wider Raqqa province, most of them only in the last few weeks, Malik said.

“They’re traumatized (by) what they’ve seen,” he said.

“Dead bodies all over the place. In some more destroyed neighborhoods, bodies still in that heat rotting on the street and in debris.”

Recent advances along the Euphrates river, which borders the city from the south, have allowed the Kurdish-led SDF to completely encircle Islamic State inside Raqqa.

“Some places do not even have enough drinking water anymore,” Malik said, after residents lost access to the river.

An estimated 30,000-50,000 people remain trapped in the city with Islamic State holding people there against their will, Malik said. Witnesses say the militants have shot at those trying to escape.

“Those who are coming out now are paying enormous amounts of money, basically their lifelong savings, to smugglers to get them out,” he said. “They’ve left family members behind.”

Many do not have enough money or could not bring elderly parents and sick relatives with them.

“There is a conflict going on to eradicate ISIS but in the process we should try to protect (civilians),” Malik said, stressing the importance of getting them safe passage out.

Even after the “military endgame” in Raqqa, he added, people will have to grapple with a humanitarian crisis and severe trauma. Many children now fear the sound of aircraft.

“This will take much longer … to bring them back to some kind of normalcy,” Malik said.

The U.S.-led coalition says it goes to great lengths to avoid civilian casualties.

Ahead of the attack on the city, the U.N. human rights office raised concerns about increasing reports of civilian deaths. In a May report, it said there had been “massive civilian casualties … and serious infrastructure destruction.”

The U.N. refugee agency is expanding its work in northeast Syria as people begin to flee the province of Deir al-Zor. A camp south of the Kurdish-controlled city of Hasakah has already taken in 2,000 displaced people, Malik said.

“Already, hundreds of them are coming out in trucks and buses,” Malik said.

Islamic State militants still control swathes of Syria’s eastern desert bordering Iraq and most of Deir al-Zor, which would be its last major foothold in Syria after losing Raqqa.

(Reporting by Ellen Francis; Editing by Robin Pomeroy)

A dozen killed, over 40 wounded in Cameroon suicide bomb attack

DOUALA (Reuters) – Two suicide bombers killed at least 12 people and wounded over 40 others in a small town in northern Cameroon near the Nigerian border late on Wednesday, a senior army source and a local official told Reuters.

“There were 14 deaths, including the two suicide bombers, and 42 wounded,” said an army colonel responsible for evacuating the wounded who asked to remain anonymous. “The attack was perpetrated by one suicide bomber, and the other was shot dead.”

The attack was carried out by two women who walked into a busy area in the center of Waza, five miles (8 km) from the Nigerian border, said Midjiyawa Bakari, the governor for the Far North region where the attack took place. He said that 13 had been killed and 43 wounded. A baby was among the dead, he said.

Many were seriously wounded and were flown to nearby hospitals, he said.

No group claimed responsibility for the attack, but the region has been a frequent target of Boko Haram militants in their eight-year bid to carve out an Islamic caliphate beyond Nigeria.

Last month, nine were killed in the town of Kolofata when two children carrying explosives blew themselves up near a camp housing people displaced by Boko Haram violence.

In eight years, Boko Haram attacks have killed more than 20,000 people in the Lake Chad region, including Nigeria, Cameroon, Chad and Niger and, according to the latest U.N. refugee agency figures, displaced 2.7 million.

(Reporting By Josiane Kouagheu, writing by Edward McAllister; Editing by Toby Chopra)

U.S. judge narrows travel ban in defeat for Trump

people hugging; travel ban

By Dan Levine and Mica Rosenberg

(Reuters) – President Donald Trump’s temporary ban on travelers from six Muslim-majority countries cannot stop grandparents and other relatives of United States citizens from entering the country, a U.S. judge said on Thursday.

The ruling by U.S. District Judge Derrick Watson in Honolulu also opens the door for more refugees and deals Trump a fresh courtroom defeat in a long back-and-forth over an executive order that has gone all the way up to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The state of Hawaii had asked Watson to narrowly interpret a Supreme Court ruling that revived parts of Trump’s March 6 executive order banning travelers from Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen for 90 days, as well as refugees for 120 days.

The Supreme Court last month said the ban could take effect, but that anyone from the six countries with a “bona fide relationship” to a U.S. person or entity could not be barred.

The Trump administration then interpreted that opinion to allow spouses, parents, children, fiancés and siblings into the country, but barred grandparents and other family members, in a measure Trump called necessary to prevent attacks.

Watson harshly criticized the government’s definition of close family relations as “the antithesis of common sense” in a ruling that changes the way the ban can now be implemented.

“Common sense, for instance, dictates that close family members be defined to include grandparents. Indeed, grandparents are the epitome of close family members,” he wrote.

A Justice Department spokeswoman declined to comment.

Trump’s order is a pretext for illegal discrimination, Hawaii Attorney General Douglas Chin said in a statement.

“Family members have been separated and real people have suffered enough,” Chin said.

Chin had asked Watson for an injunction allowing grandparents and other family members to travel to the United States. Hawaii and refugee groups also had argued that resettlement agencies have a “bona fide” relationship with the refugees they help, sometimes over the course of years.

The Justice Department said its rules were properly grounded in immigration law.

Watson said the assurance by a resettlement agency to provide basic services to a newly arrived refugee constitutes an adequate connection to the U.S. because it is a sufficiently formal and documented agreement that triggers responsibilities and compensation.

“‘Bona fide’ does not get any more ‘bona fide’ than that,” Watson said.

Melanie Nezer, vice president of global refugee advocacy group HIAS, said the ruling should mean that refugees can continue to be resettled in the United States, beyond a cap of 50,000 set by the executive order. That limit was reached this week.

“We are thrilled that thousands of people will be reunited with their family members,” said Becca Heller, director of the International Refugee Assistance Project.

More than 24,000 additional refugees should be allowed to travel to the U.S. under Watson’s order, she estimated.

Watson did not grant everything the state of Hawaii sought, however. He rejected a request to categorically exempt all Iraqis refugee applicants who believe they are at risk due to their work for the U.S. government since March, 2003, as interpreters and translators, for instance.

Watson also refused a blanket exemption for those eligible to apply to a refugee program aimed at protecting certain children at risk in El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala.

The roll-out of the narrowed version of the ban was more subdued than in January, when Trump first signed a more expansive version of his order. That sparked protests and chaos at airports around the country and the world.

(Reporting by Dan Levine in San Francisco and Mica Rosenberg in New York; Additional reporting by Andrew Chung in New York; Editing by Clarence Fernandez)

Refugees return to Syria from Lebanon in Hezbollah-mediated deal

Syrian Refugees seen at Lebanon's border region of Arsal, Lebanon July 12, 2017. REUTERS/Hassan Abdallah

By Hassan Abdullah

ARSAL, Lebanon (Reuters) – A convoy of refugees began leaving the Lebanese border region for Syria on Wednesday, a security source said, the second group to return under an agreement brokered by the Lebanese Shi’ite group Hezbollah.

The Lebanese army escorted around 250 people out of the border town of Arsal. The refugees headed for the Syrian town of Asal al-Ward across the border, northeast of Damascus.

A military media unit run by Damascus ally Hezbollah said the buses carried 60 families. An estimated 60,000 refugees are in Arsal.

It was the second batch of people to leave for their hometown across the border Arsal under the agreement, which Hezbollah arranged in indirect talks with the Syrian rebel group Saraya Ahl al-Sham, said an official in the alliance fighting in support of the Damascus government.

Hezbollah also coordinated with the Lebanese military and with the Syrian government separately, securing crossings for refugees who want to leave, the official said.

Several refugees told a Reuters photographer before a checkpoint manned by Hezbollah fighters they were eager to go back to their hometown after several years in squalid, makeshift camps in the border town of Arsal.

“It’s been three years and we haven’t seen our families and relatives, said Abeer Mahmoud al Haj, in a van with her family members around her. “May God return everyone to his country, there is no better than Syria,”

Since early in the Syrian conflict, Hezbollah has backed Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s government, along with Iran and Russia, sending thousands of men to fight the mostly Sunni Syrian rebels.

The U.N. refugee body said it was not involved in the deal. A spokeswoman said it was not encouraging large-scale return of refugees to a country where conflict is still raging.

“The UNHCR is not at a stage where it’s promoting return because the conditions are not conducive,” Dana Sleiman said.

Two refugees in Arsal who refused to give their names said many in the camps were unwilling to return because of fears their young men would be drafted into the army. Many had also lost their livelihoods and their villages had been ransacked.

“RECONCILIATION DEALS”

More than 1 million registered Syrian refugees have fled to Lebanon, now making up a quarter of its population, the United Nations refugee agency says. The number is widely put at closer to 1.5 million.

They are scattered across Lebanon, mostly in makeshift camps and often in severe poverty, and face the risk of arrest because of restrictions on legal residence and work.

The group of refugees returned on Wednesday as part of a local deal, not a broader agreement. Politicians are deeply divided over whether Lebanon should work directly with the Syrian government over the return of refugees, which Hezbollah and its allies advocate.

Others, including Lebanese Prime Minister Saad al-Hariri, are strongly opposed, questioning the safety of the refugees once they return. Hariri has called for secure areas to be set up on the Syrian side of the border to which refugees could voluntarily return under United Nations supervision.

In a televised speech on Tuesday, Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah warned that time was running out for Syrian militants along the border near Arsal to reach deals with Syrian authorities.

“It’s high time to end the threat of militant groups in Arsal and little time is left to reach certain reconciliation deals,” Nasrallah said. “There are terrorists and planners of attacks in Arsal and this needs a solution.”

Nasrallah praised the security campaign the Lebanese army has been waging in recent weeks against suspected militants.

The Lebanese army says it regularly stages operations in the hills near the northeastern border against Islamic State and militants formerly linked to al Qaeda.

In late June, authorities arrested several hundred people in raids on Syrian refugee camps in Arsal. A Lebanese military prosecutor has ordered forensic examinations on the bodies of four of them who died in army custody, after rights groups called for an investigation.

(Additional reporting by Laila Bassam and Suleiman al Khalidi in Beirut; writing by Ellen Francis; editing by Andrew Roche)

At G20 summit, Trump promises $639 million in food, humanitarian aid

U.S. President Donald Trump attends a working session at the G-20 summit in Hamburg, northern Germany, Saturday, July 8, 2017.REUTERS/Markus Schreiber, Pool

HAMBURG (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump on Saturday promised $639 million in funding for humanitarian programs, including $331 million to help feed starving people in four famine-hit countries – Somalia, South Sudan, Nigeria and Yemen.

Trump’s pledge came during a working session of the G20 summit of world leaders in Hamburg, providing a “godsend” to the U.N. World Food Programme, the group’s executive director, David Beasley, told Reuters on the sidelines of the meeting.

“We’re facing the worst humanitarian crisis since World War Two,” said Beasley, a Republican and former South Carolina governor who was nominated by Trump to head the world’s largest humanitarian agency fighting hunger worldwide.

He said the additional funding was about a third of what the agency estimated was required this year to deal with urgent food needs in the four countries facing famine and in other areas.

The WFP estimates that 109 million people around the world will need food assistance this year, up from 80 million last year, with 10 of the 13 worst affected zones stemming from wars and “man-made” crises, Beasley said.

“We estimated that if we didn’t receive the funding we needed immediately that 400,000 to 600,000 children would be dying in the next four months,” he said.

Trump’s announcement came after his administration proposed sharp cuts in funding for the U.S. State Department and other humanitarian missions as part of his “America First” policy.

Beasley said the agency had worked hard with the White House and the U.S. government to secure the funding, but Trump would insist that other countries contributed more as well.

A WPF spokesman said Germany recently pledged an additional 200 million euros for food relief.

The United States has long been the largest donor to the WFP.

(Reporting by Andrea Shalal; editing by John Stonestreet)

Desperate civilians flee last Islamic State pocket in Mosul

Displaced Iraqi people who fled from Islamic State militants stand in line for a security check in Mosul, Iraq July 3, 2017. Picture taken July 3, 2017. REUTERS/Alaa Al-Marjani

By Stephen Kalin

MOSUL, Iraq (Reuters) – Shop-owner Adnan dragged himself from the rubble two days in a row after the houses he was sheltering in were bombed, one after the other, in the U.S.-led campaign to uproot the last Islamic State militants from Mosul.

“Daesh (Islamic State) forced us out of our home, so we moved to a relative’s house nearby. Yesterday the house was bombed,” he said after the army evacuated him on Monday. “We moved to my cousin’s house and this morning it was also bombed.”

Adnan, who has shrapnel lodged in his skull from an earlier mortar attack, said he survived, with others, by hiding in the houses’ underground cellars.

Thousands of people in the last patch of Mosul still controlled by the insurgents have been huddling for weeks in similar conditions, with little food and no electricity. They fear being bombed if they remain in place and being shot by snipers if they try to flee.

Iraqi forces have pushed Islamic State into a shrinking rectangle no more than 300 by 500 meters beside the Tigris river, but slowed their advance on Tuesday out of caution for an estimated 10,000 civilians trapped there alongside the militants.

Residents have been caught in the crossfire – and often intentionally targeted by Islamic State – since the offensive began more than eight months ago. Thousands have been killed and around 900,000 – around half of Mosul’s pre-war population – have been displaced.

Those in the historic Old City, the offensive’s final target, have been besieged and under fire for longer than those in any other part of Mosul, and the toll is apparent.

Children are emerging bone thin and severely dehydrated, elderly people are collapsing en route. In many cases there is nothing to eat besides boiled wheat.

At a mustering point less than a kilometer from the frontline, residents rattled off the latest prices of basic goods which they said had become prohibitively expensive in the past three months: a kilogram of lentils for 60,000 Iraqi dinars ($51), rice for 25,000 and flour for 22,000.

Mohammed Taher, a young man from the Makawi area of the Old City, said Russian-speaking IS fighters spread out across the neighborhood had impeded civilian movement.

“It was a prison,” he said. “Five days ago they locked the door on us. They said, ‘Don’t come out, die inside’. But the army came and freed us.”

A European medic at a field hospital said he has seen more severe trauma cases among civilians fleeing the fighting in the past week than he had in 20 years of service back home.

SCREENING

From the mustering point, camouflaged army trucks carry the evacuees across the Tigris river to a security screening center in the shadow of the Nineveh Oberoi Hotel, a former five-star hotel which Islamic State once used to house foreign fighters and suicide bombers.

More than 4,000 people have passed through that screening center since mid-May, said Lieutenant Colonel Khalid al-Jabouri, who runs the site. In that time, security forces have detained around 400 suspected IS members, he said.

“They are wanted so they cross with the civilians like they are one of them,” he told Reuters. “In order to relieve our country from these pigs, we have to check every person who comes and goes.”

Jabouri pointed out two middle-aged men who intelligence officers had pulled aside from among several dozen others for suspected links to Islamic State. One wore a traditional white robe and black headdress, the other had a shaved head and a bandage on one leg.

“That person is a Daesh member,” he said, pointing at the second man. “He crossed without papers but he is Daesh. He crossed wounded or pretending to be wounded.”

The number of Islamic State militants fighting in Mosul, by far the biggest city it has ever controlled, has dwindled from thousands at the start of the U.S.-backed offensive to a couple of hundred now, according to the Iraqi military.

The security forces rely on a list of names and witness testimonies to identify suspected Islamic State members. Even as the military offensive draws to a close, though, it is clear that some militants have managed to slip through the cracks.

Suspected militants are arrested on a daily basis in Mosul neighborhoods proclaimed “liberated” from Islamic State months ago, and several suicide attacks have already been carried out in those areas.

(Editing by Philippa Fletcher)

Poland did not invite refugees, has right to say ‘no’: Kaczynski

Leader of ruling party Jaroslaw Kaczynski gestures during a Law and Justice party congress in Przysucha, Poland July 1, 2017. Agencja Gazeta/Slawomir Kaminski via REUTERS

WARSAW (Reuters) – Poland has a moral right to say ‘no’ to refugees, the country’s most powerful politician said on Saturday.

Jaroslaw Kaczynski, head of the ruling party Law and Justice (PiS), gave his views on immigration at a party convention in Przysucha, 100 km (60 miles) south of Warsaw.

“We have not exploited the countries from which these refugees are coming to Europe these days, we have not used their labor force and finally we have not invited them to Europe. We have a full moral right to say ‘no’,” Kaczynski said in a speech broadcast on television.

Last month the European Commission launched a legal case against Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic for refusing to take in asylum seekers, highlighting the feud within the 28-nation bloc over how to deal with migration.

Kaczynski, who has criticized the European Union’s relocation schemes for migrants on many occasions, also said that the PiS could not be accused of being anti-European, as it backed Poland’s joining the block in 2004 and now appreciates the inflow of EU funds.

“The fact that we appreciate them (the funds), does not mean that we have lost the right to various assessments, including those regarding the historical context,” Kaczynski said, adding that Poland has never received any compensation for the losses it suffered during the Second World War.

During his 70-minute speech, the PiS leader suggested the government increase social spending if the economic situation allows. He also said there was a need to reduce the share of foreign capital in the media sector.

(Reporting by Agnieszka Barteczko and Pawel Sobczak; Editing by Stephen Powell)

Nearly half a million Syrians return to own homes this year: UNHCR

GENEVA (Reuters) – Nearly half a million Syrians have returned to their homes so far this year, including 440,000 internally displaced people and more than 31,000 returning from neighboring countries, the U.N. refugee agency said on Friday.

Most returned to Aleppo, Hama, Homs and Damascus, it said, on the view that security had improved in parts of the country.

“This is a significant trend and a significant number,” UNHCR spokesman Andrej Mahecic told a Geneva news briefing.

“Most of these people are returning to check on properties, to find out about family members … They have their own perceptions about the security situation, real or perceived improvements in areas they are returning to.”

He said it was premature to say whether de-escalation zones set up via talks held by Russia, Iran and Turkey in Astana or U.N.-led peace talks in Geneva had accelerated the return trend.

An estimated 6.3 million people remain internally displaced across Syria after more than six years of war, Mahecic said.

A further 5 million are refugees in neighboring countries.

A survey conducted by the UNHCR in recent weeks showed that more than 80 percent of Syrian refugees expressed their wish to return home, he said.

“Of those, only about 6 percent were considering that to be a possibility in the near future,” he said

UNHCR believes that conditions for refugees to return in safety and dignity “are not yet in place in Syria”, he added.

(Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay; Editing by Alison Williams)

Asylum requests dip slightly after 2015 record, OECD says

People walk as they flee deeper into the remaining rebel-held areas of Aleppo, Syria December 13, 2016. REUTERS/Abdalrhman Ismail

PARIS (Reuters) – The number of people fleeing war or strife for stabler parts of the world fell marginally in 2016 from a record high in 2015, with the lion’s share of those seeking asylum doing so in Germany, the OECD said on Thursday.

In a report on broader migration trends, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development said that the biggest exodus of asylum-seekers was from war-ravaged Syria, followed by Afghanistan and Iraq.

Asylum request numbers continued to drop in the early months of this year, it added.

For a fourth straight year, Germany registered by far the largest number of asylum applications – 48 percent of a world total of 1.64 million in 2016.

The United States, where the bulk of asylum applications are from Latin Americans, was a distant second, registering 262,000 asylum applications.

The total number of applications dropped by one percent from 2015, said the Paris-based OECD, which noted that many of those who arrived in Germany in 2015 filed formal asylum applications in 2016.

When compared to the population of the host country, Germany registered more than 10 times as many asylum requests as the United States and four times as many as Italy, another key destination for many migrants, notably from Nigeria.

The OECD, a think-tank funded by the governments of its 35 member countries, most of them wealthy economies and relatively stable politically, suggested the slight dip in asylum requests in 2016 may be followed by a more pronounced reduction this year.

In the first six months of 2017, the total number of landings on European shores reached 85,000, around 10 times less than at the peak in the second half of 2015, it said in a statement that accompanied its report.

With two in three refugees arriving in Europe, OECD chief Angel Gurria said: “Improving the integration of immigrants and their children, including refugees, is vital to delivering a more prosperous, inclusive future for all.”

While OECD countries, primarily in Western Europe, received 1.6 million asylum requests in 2016, Turkey alone was providing temporary protection to another three million Syrians, the organization said.

(Reporting by Brian Love; Editing by Toby Davis)

Mosul battle to end in days as troops advance in Old City

A displaced Iraqi child eats after fleeing with his family during the fights between the Iraqi army and Islamic State militants, in the old city in Mosul, Iraq June 26, 2017.

By Marius Bosch and Khaled al-Ramahi

MOSUL, Iraq (Reuters) – The battle to wrest full control of the Iraqi city of Mosul from Islamic State will be over in a few days, the Iraqi military said on Monday, as elite counter-terrorism units fought militants among the narrow alleyways of the historic Old City.

An attempted fight-back by militants failed on Sunday night and Islamic State’s grip on the city, once its de facto capital in Iraq, was weakened, a senior commander said.

“Only a small part (of the militants) remains in the city, specifically the Old City,” Lieutenant General Abdul Ghani al-Assadi, commander of the Counter-Terrorism Service (CTS) in Mosul, told Reuters.

“From a military perspective, Daesh (Islamic State) is finished,” Assadi said. “It has lost its fighting spirit and its balance. We are making calls to them to surrender or die.”

 

Iraqi security forces transport displaced civilians with an armoured fighting vehicle out of West Mosul during fighting with Islamic State militants in the Old City of Mosul, Iraq

Iraqi security forces transport displaced civilians with an armoured fighting vehicle out of West Mosul during fighting with Islamic State militants in the Old City of Mosul, Iraq June 24, 2017. REUTERS/Marius Bosch

As CTS units battled militants in the densely-populated maze of tiny streets of the Old City, which lies by the western bank of the Tigris river, Assadi said the area under Islamic State control in Mosul was now less than two sq kms.

Mosul will fall “in very few days, God willing,” he added.

Up to 350 militants are estimated by the Iraqi military to be besieged in the Old City, dug in among civilians in crumbling houses and making extensive use of booby traps, suicide bombers and sniper fire to slow down the advance of Iraqi troops.

More than 50,000 civilians, about half the Old City’s population, remain trapped behind Islamic State lines with little food, water or medicines, according to those who escaped.

 

A displaced Iraqi family flees during the fight between the Iraqi army and Islamic State militants, in the old city of Mosul, Iraq

A displaced Iraqi family flees during the fight between the Iraqi army and Islamic State militants, in the old city of Mosul, Iraq June 26, 2017. REUTERS/Alaa Al-Marjani

A U.S.-led international coalition is providing air and ground support in the eight-month-old offensive.

The militants last week destroyed the historic Grand al-Nuri Mosque and its leaning minaret from which their leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi declared a caliphate spanning parts of Iraq and Syria three years ago. The mosque’s grounds remain under the militants’ control.

Iraqi troops captured the neighborhood of al-Faruq in the northwestern side of the Old City facing the mosque, the military said on Monday.

PUSHING EAST

Iraqi forces took the eastern side of Mosul from Islamic State in January, after 100 days of fighting, and started attacking the western side in February.

Assadi said Iraqi forces had linked up along al-Faruq, a main street bisecting the Old City, and would start pushing east, toward the river. “It will be the final episode,” he said.

Aid organizations say Islamic State has stopped many civilians from leaving, using them as human shields. Hundreds of civilians fleeing the Old City have been killed in the past three weeks.

Islamic State has carried out sporadic suicide bombings in parts of Mosul using sleeper cells. It launched a wave of such attacks late on Sunday, trying to take control of a district west of the Old City, Hay al-Tanak, and the nearby Yarmuk neighborhood.

Assadi said an attempt by the militants to take over the neighborhoods had failed and they were now besieged in one or two pockets of Hay al-Tanak.

Security forces were searching the two neighborhoods house to house, as a curfew was still in force over parts of western Mosul, witnesses said.

Social media carried posts showing black smoke and reports that it came from houses and cars set alight by the militants. Some of the residents who had fled the fighting returned to areas where the curfew was partially lifted, witnesses said.

The authorities did not confirm a report on Mosul Eye, an anonymous blogger who supplied information on the city during the militants’ rule, that 12 civilians had been killed in the attacks.

The fall of Mosul would mark the end of the Iraqi half of the “caliphate”, but Islamic State remains in control of large areas of both Iraq and Syria.

Islamic State’s Baghdadi has left the fighting in Mosul to local commanders and is assumed to be hiding in the Iraqi-Syrian border area. There has been no confirmation of Russian reports over the past days that he has been killed.

In Syria, the insurgents’ “capital” Raqqa, is nearly encircled by a U.S.-backed, Kurdish-led coalition.

(Writing by Maher Chmaytelli; Editing by Richard Balmforth)