20,000 Mosul refugees return home, slightly easing the burden in camps

BAGHDAD, Iraq—Around 120,000 people have been displaced from their homes since the start of the Iraqi army offensive against SIS in Mosul two months ago, says Iraq’s immigration ministry, but also a considerable number have returned home.

Immigration Minister Darbaz Mohammed said that the majority of the displaced are from Mosul, the rest of Nineveh province and areas under ISIS control in Kirkuk, mainly Hawija.

Mohammed said the camps receive 2,000 displaced people on a daily basis, which increases the challenge for them and the people in need.

He added in the meantime that sometimes the burden is eased by people leaving the camps for home.

“The good thing about this matter is that there are nearly 20,000 people who have returned to their own places,” he said at a press conference in Baghdad on Wednesday.

The minister said that their capacity only allows them to accommodate another 120,000 displaced people at most, “but I hope we do not reach that level,”

Mohammed said that his ministry is coordinating with the UN and the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) to receive a total of 500,000 Mosul IDPs as the military operation to wrest control of the city from ISIS continues.

The immigration minister said that the government has also helped return 1,400 Mosul refugees from Syria.

Hassan Sham east of Mosul is one of the largest camps, which has so far received 40,000 people.

The Iraqi government currently has an estimated 1.5 million IDPs on its hands to deal with and help return to their homes in the future.

Some residents of Mosul preferred to stay in the city at the start of the operation, but most have been forced out by lack of food and medicine and resorted to the camps.

“The city is already encircled. There are no supply routes from Syria for food, for medicine, for any supplies into the city,” said Hoshang Mohammed, head of the KRG’s Joint Crisis Coordination Center (JCC).