Friday 2 December 2016

A mother has described the heartbreak of watching her two starving sons who are 'dead already' after days without food in the ISIS-held city of Mosul in Iraq.


A mother has described the heartbreak of watching her two starving sons who are 'dead already' after days without food in the ISIS-held city of Mosul in Iraq.
The boys were already emaciated when they arrived at the Hasansham refugee camp near Mosul this week and they do not seem to be responding to treatment by UNICEF, who run the camp.
Their mother told
BBC Radio 5 live reporter Anna Foster: 'It's so difficult for me, for my husband, for them. I can see that they are dead already. I cannot believe that they are alive.'
One of the children is aged two and his brother is nine, although he is so thin that he looks half that age.
The boys' thin bodies can be seen lying on a mattress, their ribs and knee joints protruding.
The mother, who is not identified for her own safety, said she pleaded with ISIS leaders in the besieged city to let her take the children out of the city earlier.
She is thought to have eventually escaped the city with her husband and the boys after ISIS lost control of the district where they lived.
But she has complained of shortages in the camp and said: 'I've been here for four days and we have no food, we have not received clothes, as you can see they're wearing girl's dresses.'
Around 47,000 people have arrived at the camp, pushed out of their homes in and around Mosul by heavy fighting between Iraqi special forces and ISIS.
The number rises by 3,000 every day and the new arrivals queue to collect food, soap and toothpaste.


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