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OVER 300,000 displaced Mosul residents are still unable to return home two years after the city was recaptured from Isis, according to a new report.
Humanitarian organisations yesterday urged the international community to step up their support for the northern Iraqi city’s “forgotten” displaced population.
A shocking 78 per cent of those displaced from Mosul say their houses are damaged or completely destroyed in the aftermath of the US-led military campaign, according to a report by local humanitarian organisation Reach.
Norwegian Refugee Council’s Iraq country director Rishana Haniffa said: “For them, the suffering of the war that ended two years ago remains a daily battle for survival.
“It’s a disgrace that after two years, thousands of families and children still have to live in displacement camps and in abysmal conditions because their neighbourhoods are still in ruins.”
Isis overran large swathes of Syria and Iraq in 2014, proclaiming a caliphate in Mosul’s Great Mosque of al-Nuri.
The city was retaken in an operation led by Iraqi and Kurdish forces and backed by the US-led military coalition in July 2017.
But only 4 per cent of those displaced are intending to return to Mosul this year. The total number of displaced Mosul residents makes up one fifth of all internally displaced people in Iraq.
Many have been barred from returning to their homes due to their loss of ID cards, birth certificates and other documentation as they fled the jihadists.
“We urge the Iraqi government and the international community to step up reconstruction work so that Iraqis can return to their homes,” Ms Haniffa said.
“In spite of the world’s attention two years ago, Mosul’s displaced population has all but been forgotten.”