Appeals for rescues of civilians trapped in the fighting are made online with precise information and social media users around the world anxiously watch for the outcome.
The Mosul Eye, a historian and blogger from Mosul who has been documenting life under ISIS and now the battle for the city, has been involved in several rescue attempts of civilians injured or caught under crossfire.
The first rescue he helped with was a family of six whose home in east Mosul was struck by a missile in early January.
“All of my family were inside the house and something hit us,” the mother, who has asked to remain anonymous, told Rudaw English. She does not know what the munition was that struck their home.
She was beside her husband when the house was hit. “I fell unconscious for minutes but when I became conscious, he was dead.”
Her nine-year old son was also killed.
As their house burned, a neighbour helped the mother and her three surviving children out of the rubble of their home. Her six-year old daughter suffered burns and her 11-year old son had multiple fractures in his arms and legs.
The bodies of her son and husband were only able to be retrieved four days later.
Desperate for medical care but unable to escape because of the fighting, the mother and her three children stayed with a neighbour. She had lost her phone in the explosion but a cousin contacted her through the neighbour.
Via her parents living in Jordan, her uncle, also living overseas, heard of their desperate situation and the children in urgent need of medical care.
The uncle, who asked to be identified simply as Andy, said he knew his niece and her children were surrounded by a war zone and had no family members close by to help them. “I thought of Mosul Eye,” he said. “I have a good idea about him, which I can trust,” hoping that he would know the right people to contact.
Andy’s instincts were well-placed.
“I sent the information to the security bodies close to the location and they were rescued and rushed to Erbil for further assistance,” the Mosul Eye said.
The army arrived at the neighbours’ house two days after the family’s home had been struck, the mother confirmed. They were brought out of the city by the army and then by ambulance to Erbil. Her children are recovering well, she said.
Since this first rescue, the Mosul Eye has been assisted in several more.
“Mission accomplished!” he tweeted on March 9 after the rescue of more than 90 civilians trapped in the al-Mahatta area of western Mosul. He provided precise coordinates of their location to Iraq’s Golden Brigade and Federal Police who were able to mount a rescue.
Mission Accomplished! https://t.co/DTFpACRAgr
— Mosul Eye عين الموصل (@MosulEye) March 9, 2017
Other groups of civilians have not been so lucky. A family of seven was trapped in the rubble after their home was hit by a rocket. “The entire family was found dead when the rescuers arrived,” he said.
the whole family were found dead https://t.co/n8R7Hn75dm
— Mosul Eye عين الموصل (@MosulEye) March 14, 2017
“Still there are other families trapped in the crossfire,” waiting to be rescued the Mosul Eye added.
He is often contacted by relatives of families trapped in Mosul. “They provide me with detailed information about their location, and with my extensive knowledge of the city, I can determine quickly their location.”
The Mosul Eye sends the information to Iraqi forces via social media where others have now joined in the rescue mission, increasing the global nature of the effort.
J. Ramirez served six years in the United States Marine Corps Reserve where he specialized in air control and communications. He has left the military but is closely monitoring developments in the war against ISIS and came across the Mosul Eye. He has followed the blogger since a few months after the city fell to the extremist group.
Ramirez has a friend, Austin Howe, who works a few kilometres back of the frontlines in Mosul with the Academy of Emergency Medicine (AEM) providing emergency health care.
“After I learned my friend was going to Mosul, I started gathering resources via Twitter in order to paint him and his crew a picture of what is going on in the city,” Ramirez told Rudaw English. “Given that he has direct contact with ISOF [Iraqi Special Operations Forces] due to being embedded with them, I began messaging him coordinates that were tweeted so that Iraqi forces were made aware in a shorter amount of time.”
Howe passes the information to their outfield teams “with the hopes of it leading to a rescue,” he told Rudaw English. Ramirez and the patients AEM receives are their main sources of information for what is going on in Mosul. The social media-sourced information is giving their organization a perspective of the battlefield that they do not have where they are, in the middle of the action.
With Ramirez’ information, “we are able to see and hear things we don’t even see on the frontlines,” Howe said. “These events playing out on social media have been a great advantage for myself and the Academy of Emergency Medicine.”
At the moment, more than 90 percent of AEM’s patients are brought to them by the Iraqi forces in their Humvees, Howe explained. But his team is hoping to have the resources to carry out rescues of civilians themselves, assisted by social media-sourced information from Ramirez.
Ramirez, based on the east coast of the US, stays up late most nights to monitor daily events in Mosul.
For him, the immediacy of social media is a game-changer. “Social media contributions give these trapped civilians a fighting chance because it makes Iraqi forces able to prioritize rescues with definite information such as using coordinates and the details that follow.”
The Mosul Eye agrees, describing social media as “the new concept of this age.”
“It is a huge change, in addition, to be able to reach out to those who were rescued and hear their voices, knowing that I helped rescue them and spare their lives is priceless.”
“And all in real time.”
“This is humanity,” said the mother who was rescued with her children. “No one can hear such a story and not have feelings. Even if they are strangers, we all have feelings for such a situation.”
