Aid agencies, including Catholic groups, are preparing to help an expected 1.5 million people flee Mosul and surrounding villages.
The military offensive to root out ISIS militants from Mosul will be a “huge challenge”, the United Nations has said.
Humanitarian agencies in Iraq are racing to complete preparations, as it is believed that the US-led assault could be pushed forward to as early as September. Aid groups fear they may be overwhelmed by the sheer numbers involved.
The UN said that as the Mosul crisis develops, up to 13 million people throughout Iraq may need aid by the year’s end.
The humanitarian operation in Mosul could be the largest and most complex in the world in 2016.
Bruno Geddo, UNHCR chief for Iraq, told Catholic News Service that the United Nations has issued an appeal for $284m (£217m) for the “preparation of camps ahead of the humanitarian emergency from Mosul”. He said a cluster of camps needed to be built in six locations in disputed territory. “Not only do you have to make sure that the location is not in the direct range in the line of fire,” he said, “but the terrain must be fit to build a camp.”
He said safety and security screenings were top priorities as Sunni Muslims flood out of Mosul, controlled by ISIS for the past two years. Iraqi authorities will conduct the security screenings to identify ISIS collaborators.
Others who pass the screening may escape to the Nineveh Plains, the ancestral heartland of Iraqi Christians. This may not be acceptable to the Christians or Yazidis who have been persecuted by their Sunni neighbours.
Archbishop: Western aid is not reaching Christians
Most western humanitarian aid is failing to reach the thousands of Christians who have fled their homes as ISIS fighters have swept through Iraq and Syria, Middle Eastern bishops have said at the 134th Knights of Columbus convention in Toronto.Chaldean Archbishop Bashar Warda of Irbil, in Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq, said: “It’s time ... to rethink American policy in the Middle East.” “Call on the government to direct the help directly to the people affected.” The only aid reaching Christians in the region comes from churches, he said. Western governments need to get over their reluctance to fund church organisations.
A visibly angry Melkite Archbishop Jean-Clément Jeanbart of Aleppo said: “The governments send their money to the people in the camps and to the fighters and nothing to us.”
He said aid was needed as a way of keeping Christians in the region ready to reclaim their homes when the war is over. Patriarch Ignace Joseph III Younan, head of the Syriac Catholic Church, said Western policy was hypocritical, driven by global strategic interests and the price of oil.
Nuns brave bombs in Aleppo
Carmelite nuns have chosen to remain in their convent in Syria in spite of continuous airstrikes from both Syrian and Russian forces.The women religious have appealed for help from Aid to the Church in Need (ACN). Sister Anne-Françoise of Aleppo’s Discalced Carmelite Sisters told ACN: “The bombs are falling all around us, but we are not going to leave the people in their suffering.”
