The Daesh terrorist group is "forcibly transferring some
25,000 civilians towards locations in and around Mosul", a
spokeswoman for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights said on
Tuesday.
"We have reports that in the early hours of yesterday morning,
around 1.00 a.m. ISIL brought dozens of long trucks and mini-buses
to Hamam al-Alil City, south of Mosul, in an attempt to forcibly
transfer some 25,000 civilians towards locations in and around
Mosul," OHCHR spokeswoman Ravina Shamdasani said in a press
conference.
Shamdasani said trucks were prevented from proceeding towards
Mosul due to coalition flights patrolling the area.
"The trucks were forced to return to Hamam al-Alil. However some
buses did reach Abu Saif, 15 kilometers [9 miles] north of Hamam
al-Alil City," she said, adding that she had "grave concerns for
the safety of these and the tens of thousands of other civilians
who have reportedly been forcibly relocated by ISIL in the past two
weeks."
Shamdasani also said that there had been additional reports of
mass killings by Daesh.
"On Saturday, 40 former Iraqi Security Force soldiers were
killed and their bodies thrown in the Tigris River," she added.
Shamdasani said these Iraqi soldiers "were reportedly among the
civilians who had been abducted earlier from al-Shura sub-district
of Mosul and from villages surrounding Hamam al-Alil."
On Oct. 18, the Iraqi army -- backed by a U.S.-led air coalition
-- began a wide-ranging operation to retake Mosul, Iraq’s
second-largest city and capital of the northern Nineveh
province.
Since then, dozens of Daesh-held villages on the city’s
outskirts have fallen before the army onslaught, although the
terrorist group remains in control of the city.