Kurdish family killed in Mosul air strike, bodies trapped under rubble

DUHOK, Kurdistan Region—Five members of a Kurdish family were killed in Mosul on Friday in an air strike that hit the wrong target and the corpses of the dead are still trapped under the rubble, relatives say.

The five killed were Abdulla Salman’s family.

“At Ifttar [breaking fast] time a missile hit my father’s house, and killed my mother, my father, my brother, my brother’s wife, and my niece.” Salman told Rudaw.

Salman lives in Duhok.

The Kurdish family’s home was located about 150 meters from the Mosul’s iconic al-Nuri mosque in the old quarter of town.

With their bodies still trapped under the destroyed building relatives in Duhok held funeral services for them.

Before the ISIS takeover of 2014 thousands of Kurds lived in Mosul. Most fled as the extremist group took over while others got stranded.

Abdulwahab Brwari, another relative of the victims said they cannot retrieve the bodies from under the heavy concrete and all they could do is “pray for them.”

Only Zainab, a five-year-old girl survived the air strike and she was rescued with injuries and taken to a hospital where she is receiving treatment.

Nadia Hussein, another relative sobbing at the funeral ceremony, said that they too were in Mosul and had escaped not long before the intense battle between the army and ISIS militants came to their city.

This is the second such incident involving Kurdish civilians in Mosul. Eight members of a family were killed in a similar strike in March whose bodies were later buried in Duhok by relatives.