Geneva - An estimated 400 000 Iraqis are
trapped in the Isis-controlled Old City of west Mosul amid food
shortages and growing panic under shelling, the United Nations
refugee agency UNHCR said on Thursday.
Many civilians fear fleeing because of Islamic State
snipers, but some 157 000 have reached a transit centre since
the Iraqi government offensive on west Mosul began a month ago,
it said.
"The worst is yet to come, if I can put it this way. Because
400 000 people trapped in the Old City in that situation of
panic and penury may inevitably lead to the cork popping
somewhere, sometime, presenting us with a fresh outflow of
large-scale proportions," Bruno Geddo, UNHCR representative in
Iraq, speaking from the transit centre outside Mosul, told a
Geneva news briefing.