“No one has seen the suffering we have seen. Only God saw it,” said Fahmi Hassan who is newly displaced from Tal Afar. “53 people died only on the way from Mazraa to the Badush checkpoint. People are in chaos. Everything in our life is destroyed,” he said.
In total, over 30,000 people have fled from Tal Afar since April. Many flee to Hamam al-Alil, a city outside of Mosul where the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) is present providing aid. The majority of people arriving here are from villages around Tal Afar city and report walking up to 20 hours before reaching Badoush, a point at which the authorities provide onward transport, including to Hamam al-Alil. NRC staff report that people arriving in Hamam al-Alil are in poor condition.
“Civilians who have been trapped under IS’s rule for more than three years are starting to reach relative safety, including in Hamam al-Alil,” said Heidi Diedrich, Country Director for NRC in Iraq. “It is critical that the barriers civilians are now facing on their freedom of movement are immediately lifted, so that they can move onward to camps and communities of their choice.”
NRC manages two transit sites in Hamam al-Alil, providing services to more than 6,500 people who recently fled Tal Afar. The transit sites, which are near capacity, usually provide temporary accommodation for displaced civilians for one-to-two days. Current movement restrictions placed on these civilians has resulted in people staying in the transit sites for much longer.
With thousands more expected to flee toward Hamam al-Alil in the coming weeks, it will become increasingly difficult for humanitarian actors to provide the necessary assistance to those fleeing the violence in Tal Afar.
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