Within the past week (6-12 December) over 9,800 displaced Iraqis have arrived at the Emergency Site in Al-Qayara Airstrip in Ninewa governorate. Most had fled their homes due to armed conflict and were in immediate need of humanitarian assistance.
Arrivals continue daily, including 80 families who arrived yesterday from Merkaz (central) Mosul and Altal sub-districts in Mosul district. Families at the site are from the districts of Hatra and Mosul in Ninewa governorate, and from Al-Shirqat in Salah al-Din governorate. More than 1,600 families have been registered at the site.
The Emergency Site was established by IOM in cooperation with Iraq’s Ministry of Displacement and Migration (MoMD) and is managed by humanitarian partners.
Each family has been assigned a tent, has received a non-food item kit, and has access to medical assistance. IOM teams are on the ground day and night, providing emergency response, medical, shelter, and camp coordination and camp management assistance.
A total of 3,100 tents have been erected to date. An additional 1,500 MoMD tents were received and are rapidly being set up in anticipation of additional arrivals.
In cooperation with the Ninewa Department of Health, IOM teams are now providing more than 800 primary health consultations per day. Most cases involve upper respiratory tract infections.
Two babies, Nader and Hijran, who were born shortly after their families arrived at the site last week on 6 December, were provided with baby clothes and are receiving health-care assistance.
Two young men at the site who fled from Al-Shirqat with their families said: “We want to go back to school. We’ve lost three years of school under ISIL. We should have been in university by now. We could become engineers or English teachers and serve our communities in the future. We need job opportunities so we can support our families because we are running out of cash. We are able to buy bread today, but maybe not tomorrow.”
They continued, “When we fled, some of us crossed the river swimming, others took the long road crossing over the bridge. My clothes got soaking wet. I don’t have any other clothes so if I want to wash these, I have to stay in the tent and sit by the heater until they dry. The nights are very cold. I don’t know what we would do if we didn’t have these tents and the heater. We need more clothes and fuel for the heater to keep us warm.”
IOM Iraq Chief of Mission Thomas Lothar Weiss said: “Thousands of families continue to be displaced by the ongoing Mosul operations. These families risk their lives and undertake arduous journeys to reach safe locations. IOM is pleased to be providing shelter at Al-Qayara Emergency Site in cooperation with MoMD and humanitarian partners. Humanitarian assistance urgently needs to be expanded to provide the support that displaced Iraqis need to survive.”
Support for the Emergency Sites has been provided to IOM through financial and in-kind contributions from the Office of US Foreign Disaster Assistance (OFDA), the European Union Humanitarian Aid and Civil Protection Department (ECHO), the UK Department for International Development (DFID) and the Governments of Germany, Canada and New Zealand.
More than 93,500 individuals are currently displaced as a result of Mosul operations, which began on 17 October. This figure represents an increase of over 8,000 individuals in the last four days (since 6 December). Since 17 October to date, displacement from Mosul operations stands at 93,576 people; over 50,700 of them are from the sub-district of Markaz Mosul, where Mosul City is located.
The majority of the displaced are from Mosul district (84 percent, around 78,800 individuals). Others are coming from the districts of Hatra (7 percent, over 6,300 individuals); Tilkaif (4 percent, over 4,000 individuals); Al-Hamdaniya (3 percent, over 2,800 individuals); Telefar (1 percent, nearly 1,200 individuals), and Makhmur (less than 1 percent, over 300 individuals).
These displacements are in addition to the more than 3 million Iraqis currently displaced across the country since January 2014.
