$400: The price of escape from ISIS in Hawija

KIRKUK, Kurdistan Region — Families seeking to flee ISIS in Hawija can reportedly pay $400 to escape. Kurdish security authorities screen them carefully some of the families were forced to conceal ISIS militants among their numbers as they flee to Kirkuk. 

"Anyone can escape by paying $400, or $300," said an elderly woman who had just arrived at one of Kirkuk's camps that is dedicated to receive thousands of Hawija citizens who flee from the clutches of ISIS. "We have paid so we won't face ISIS anymore." 

There are people who find a way to flee for free, she added, saying they take other routes out of the city under the cover of night.  

An estimated 8,000 Hawija residents have been displaced to Kirkuk Province in the last half of 2016. They go through a security screening process before they are registered in the camps.

Salar Zebari is a Peshmerga officer who monitors the screening process that hopes to prevent ISIS militants from sneaking into the camps and Kurdish territory with the displaced people (IDPs). 

"The convoy has brought 400 Mosul IDPs for today," Zebari said, maintaining that they interrogate all suspicious individuals among the IDPs. "We arrest the suspicious ones and hand them over to Asayesh," he added, referring to the Kurdish security forces.

At least 15 militants who tried to conceal themselves among the IDPS have been arrested in Kirkuk, according to the city's Asayesh. 

"There have been militants who were armed and mingled themselves among the families who come here," said Farhad Hama-Ali, Kirkuk's Asayesh spokesperson. "Yes there have been ISIS members who tried to cross to here with those families."