Iraq - A three-car IOM convoy travelled south from Erbil, Iraq, yesterday (27/10) into territory retaken recently from ISIL in Iraq’s Ninewah governorate. The convoy stopped in the district of Qayara to assess damage to schools and a hospital, and as well as to survey a former airstrip that is being prepared as an emergency site for large-scale displacement expected from Mosul in coming weeks.

IOM’s Displacement Tracking Matrix (DTM) also yesterday (27/10) reported the movement of over 5,000 men, women and children – the highest number yet identified in a single 24-hour period since military operations against ISIL began on October 17. Over half of those families identified have been displaced from villages near Mosul and are now in Qayara.

To reach those internally displaced families, the IOM team travelled a torturous path to the district’s urban core, which hugs the banks of the Tigris River. With its main Tigris bridge destroyed in the fighting, vehicles reach the city via a temporary pontoon structure guarded by units of the Iraqi Security Forces. Along the way, the IOM team spotted dozens of homes pockmarked with bullet holes and some large buildings flattened by aerial bombardment.

The outside of the district’s main hospital was riddled with shrapnel from recent combat. Inside the IOM emergency health team found most of the wards’ medical equipment had been looted.

Dr. Abdulrahman Khalaf, an Iraqi health official, explained that his staff had already removed almost 50 explosive devices found hidden on the hospital’s two lower floors and expected to find more.

“This hospital was brand new. ISIL took it over and used it for their forces,” Dr. Khalaf explained, adding that local people were charged fees to access its services in the years before Iraqi forces retook the town.

During the IOM visit to the site, gunfire bursts were heard on a nearby block, which Dr. Khalaf explained may have come from security forces who continue to search for hostiles nearby in densely populated neighborhoods.

IOM team member Dr. Nedal Odeh said that IOM plans to establish a mobile health clinic at the site – the first step towards restoring what was once a showcase facility for health care in the district.

In addition to these site assessments, IOM this week in Ninewah distributed non-food relief items to recently displaced families in three locations. They included winter kits containing carpets, blankets, towels and cooking stoves.

Before leaving the district, IOM visited the Qayara airstrip site, which is expected to receive as many as 60,000 internally displaced persons when an emergency site is erected on what had been a British military installation constructed before World War II.

Graders and other heavy machinery were working on the site on Thursday. Several portable “rub halls” – large temporary buildings – have already been set up.

For further information, please contact IOM Erbil. Joel Millman, Tel. +41 79 103 87 20, Email: jmillman@iom.int or Jennifer Sparks, Tel: +964.751 740 1642, Email: jsparks@iom.int.