(Erbil) – Fighters with the Islamic State (also known as ISIS) have indiscriminately attacked civilian areas in eastern Mosul with mortar rounds and explosives, and deliberately shot at fleeing residents, Human Rights Watch said today. Iraqi and coalition forces have also killed and wounded civilians by striking or deploying from homes.
Fleeing residents who spoke with Human Rights Watch said that ISIS justified the attacks on civilians because many of them had refused the group’s orders to join its retreat west to areas of Mosul that it still controlled, where they feared they would be used as human shields. Residents said ISIS members told them in person, by radio, and over mosque loudspeakers that those who stayed behind were “unbelievers” and therefore valid targets along with the Iraqi and coalition forces.
“If ISIS really cared about the people trapped in its so-called caliphate it would let them flee to safety,” said Lama Fakih, deputy Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. “Instead, it is indiscriminately or deliberately killing and wounding people for refusing to be human shields.”
In interviews in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq in December, 2016, Human Rights Watch spoke with more than 50 residents who had fled eastern Mosul. Thirty-one of them provided firsthand accounts of 18 mortar or sniper attacks, car bombings, or detonations of improvised explosive devices by ISIS that indiscriminately or directly killed or wounded civilians. Witnesses said that some ISIS mortar attacks took place in areas where Iraqi military forces had positioned soldiers inside homes or on residential rooftops in densely populated areas. Five witnesses described what they said were three separate Iraqi or coalition airstrikes that targeted ISIS fighters similarly positioned on residential rooftops or in alleys between homes, but that also killed civilians...
