Humanitarian Situation Examined in Iraq by UN Chief amid Rising War Victims
YemenExtra
Y.A
UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres is in the Iraqi capital, Baghdad, to review the humanitarian situation amid the country’s intense campaign to purge Daesh Takfiri terrorists from the strategic city of Mosul.
“Just arrived in Iraq to take care of the dire humanitarian situation on the ground. Protection of civilians must be the absolute priority,” a post on Guterres’ official Twitter account said.
Guterres is scheduled to meet top Iraqi officials, including Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi before going to Arbil, the capital of the country’s semi-autonomous Kurdistan region.
Hundreds of thousands of civilians stay enclosed in Mosul among army clashes with the remaining Daesh terrorists in the western part of the city.
Apart from the civilians caught in the crossfire in west Mosul, more than 200,000 civilians have escaped their homes since the operation to retrieval the areas started last month, Iraqi officials say.
The visit comes several days after a reported US-led airstrike caused over 230 civilian deaths in western Mosul.
On Tuesday, high-ranking US commander Lieutenant General Stephen Townsend admitted that there was a “fair chance” that a US-led airstrike left the civilian dead .
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Meanwhile, the UN has called on the US-led coalition in Iraq to take further measures towards saving civilians, while noting that Daesh was forcing residents into buildings and areas which were the targets of airstrikes.
In a report, the UN’s high commissioner for human rights, Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein, also called on all forces involved in anti-terror operations in Iraq to “avoid the trap” of hitting buildings in which Daesh has planted explosives and forced locals to take shelter.
He added that the terrorists “strategy of using children, men and women to shield themselves from attack is cowardly and disgraceful. It violated the most basic standards of human dignity and morality.”
The Iraqi Observatory for Human Rights said on Sunday that since the campaign against western Mosul started on February 19, almost 700 civilians have been killed in airstrikes which are fundamentally carried out by the US.