As families flee Mosul, World Vision responds

by Max Greenstein and Kayla Robertson, World Vision

With the military offensive approaching Mosul, scores of children and their families from outlying villages are already fleeing to the overcrowded Debaga Camp near Erbil in northern Iraq. Aid agencies predict that up to 600,000 children could eventually flee the main city.

World Vision staff is at the camp and providing relief. Here are only a few of the many heartbreaking stories they are hearing from families:

Hana, a mother of four, from a village outside Mosul walked through the desert with her family to reach Debaga camp.  "We couldn't take anything with us. We walked for 14 hours to get here,” she says. Their water supply ran out about four hours into the walk. “We were very thirsty when we arrived.”  

She and her children have been sleeping in a building that was formerly a school. She says she doesn't have enough blankets, pillows and mattresses for her children to sleep on. She is mostly worried about the coming winter months when it will become very cold.  "We need food and a tent because there’s no room for us here. We need clothes for the children and blankets and pillows because the winter is coming.  

Hana is not positive about her situation in the camp and wants to return to her village saying her current situation is "so terrible". She says "all the children are sick here. There are not enough toilets and not enough food". "I want to go back to my home in Salahadin. All my relatives have been discussing that – we just to get in trucks, and go home as soon as the situation gets better. We’re waiting for our area to be liberated and then we will go back. I miss my motherland."

Fadia is a mother of three and pregnant. "But, I can't worry about my pregnancy now. I must first worry about my sick child, then me," she says. She fled from a village surrounding Mosul six days ago and recently arrived at the Debaga camp. "We were really terrified of coming here. It was a huge risk because of the fighting and the bombing." They walked for 13 hours from their village to get to Debaga. Her 16-month-old daughter, Rana, lays across her lap. "My daughter, Rana, has a fever. She's really sick and we can't afford health services. I took her yesterday to a clinic in Debaga camp, but it was so crowded and we couldn't get any help. All my children are really hungry and need food," she says.

65-year-old Assad fled the outskirts of Mosul with his wife and 11 children last week. He is now in Debaga Camp near Erbil, in northern Iraq. “My children are well-educated and were planning to go university. But ISIL were taking all the young men and recruiting them, and killing them if they refused. We just wanted safety for our children, and an education.  “Life in Mosul is full of violence. We couldn’t take it anymore,” he says.

“We escaped in the cars in the middle of the night. They were shooting on us. Some of the bullets hit the cars but we survived and no-one was injured [until] landmines struck two of the cars,” he says, nothing that some of the children were injured. “It took us another two hours to swim across the river to safety.” “Here [in the camp] there is hunger, lack of services, lack of food, lack of medicines. It feels like we’ve gone from one prison to another. We just want to go back to liberated areas, to live life like it was before ISIL came.”

Click here to watch a video report by World Vision staff at the Debaga camp.