More
than 40,000 civilians were killed in the devastating battle to retake Mosul from Isis, according to
intelligence reports revealed exclusively to The Independent – a death toll far
higher than previous estimates.
Residents
of the besieged city were killed by Iraqi ground forces attempting to force out
militants, as well as by air strikes and Isis fighters,
according to Kurdish intelligence services.
Hoshyar
Zebari, until recently a senior minister in Baghdad, told The Independent that
many bodies “are still buried under the rubble”. “The level of human
suffering is immense,” he said.
“Kurdish intelligence believes
that over 40,000 civilians have been killed as a result of massive firepower
used against them, especially by the federal police, air strikes and Isis
itself,” Mr Zebari added.
Mr Zebari, a native of
Mosul and top Kurdish official who has served as the Iraqi
finance minister and prior to that foreign minister, emphasised in an exclusive
interview that the unrelenting artillery bombardment by units of the Iraqi
federal police, in practice a heavily armed military unit, had caused immense destruction
and loss of life in west Mosul.
The figure given by Mr Zebari
for the number of civilians killed in the nine-month siege is far higher than
those previously reported, but the intelligence service of the Kurdistan
Regional Government has a reputation for being extremely accurate and
well-informed. Isis prevented any monitoring of casualties while outside groups
have largely focused on air strikes rather than artillery and rocket fire as a
cause of civilian deaths. Airwars, one such monitoring group, estimated that
attacks may have killed 5,805 non-military personnel in the city between 19
February and 19 June.
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