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25 children starve to death in Iraq near Mosul

February 18, 2017 at 3:10 pm

An Iraqi human rights organisation has called on urgent help to prevent a “humanitarian catastrophe” after it said that approximately 25 children had passed away after starving to death in areas west of Mosul due to a lack of support from the central authorities in Baghdad or the international community.

The Iraqi Observatory for Human Rights (IOHR), based in Iraq itself, said that “the [western] half of the city of Mosul, where 140,000 children live, is afflicted by starvation after food supplies ran out, along with a lack of milk and a lack of potable water.”

The IOHR said that, as a result, children were dying of hunger and thirst.

The Observatory also confirmed that they had seen evidence that 25 children had died of starvation in January alone, as Daesh extremists and the Iraqi government, backed by the US-led coalition and Iran-backed Shia jihadists, fight over Mosul.

Women in Mosul were also starving, and therefore mothers were finding it extremely hard to produce milk to breastfeed their children, leading to an ever deteriorating situation in Iraq’s second city.

The IOHR called on the Iraqi government and international aid organisations to do more to “open up air corridors in order to drop milk and foodstuffs for starving children in the western half of the city of Mosul,” adding that the Iraqi government must “prevent the exacerbation of child mortality rates that has arisen due to starvation.”

“[The Iraqi government] must also prevent Daesh from succeeding in its plan to besiege civilians in Mosul,” the IOHR said in a statement.

The Observatory also called upon the provincial authorities of Ninawa province to do more to challenge Baghdad and the United Nations, and to encourage them to support the people of Mosul who have been victims of not only Daesh extremists, but also Iraqi regime bombardment and the depravations of Shia jihadists.