Iraq races to save civilians from rubble of W. Mosul

By Ali Jawad

BAGHDAD (AA) - Iraqi security forces in western Mosul are struggling to rescue civilians trapped under the rubble of homes destroyed by recent airstrikes, an Iraqi military source told Anadolu Agency on Thursday.

According to Army Captain Jabbar Hassan, Iraqi security agencies received numerous calls late Wednesday and early Thursday reporting that dozens of civilians were trapped under the rubble of two homes in western Mosul leveled by U.S.-led air coalition airstrikes.

“The authorities were informed that some 35 people, mostly women and children, were trapped under the rubble of one destroyed home in the city’s Al-Jadida district,” Hassan said.

“Another seven civilians, meanwhile, were reportedly trapped under the rubble of a second destroyed home in the same area,” he added.

"But the intensity of fighting in the area, along with ongoing Daesh rocket attacks on liberated areas, has prevented civil defense teams from reaching the trapped civilians," Hassan asserted.

On Wednesday, an Iraqi army officer in western Mosul told Anadolu Agency that as many as 43 civilians were believed to have been killed in an attack launched “in error” by a U.S.-led anti-Daesh coalition.

On the same day, Iraqi officials announced that in recent weeks the bodies of some 80 dead civilians had been pulled from the rubble of destroyed buildings in both eastern and western Mosul.

In mid-February, Iraqi forces -- backed by the U.S.-led coalition -- began fresh operations aimed at ousting Daesh militants from western Mosul, the terrorist group’s last bastion in northern Iraq.

The offensive is part of a wider campaign launched last October to retake the entire city, which Daesh overran in mid-2014.