UN deeply concerned over US-led airstrikes on Mosul

The United Nations has expressed deep concerns over reports that more than 200 people lost their lives in two airstrikes by the US-led coalition purportedly fighting the Takfiri Daesh terrorist group in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul earlier this week.

“The United Nations is profoundly concerned by the reports yesterday of a high number of civilian casualties in al-Jadida in Iraq, a densely populated neighborhood in Mosul. Initial reports indicate hundreds of casualties,” Farhan Haq, deputy spokesman for the UN Secretary General, told a press conference on Friday.

Haq added that Lise Grande, UN Humanitarian Coordinator for Iraq, is “stunned by the horrendous loss of life” in the aerial attacks.

Grande urged all parties to the operation in the embattled western Mosul, where Iraqi troops backed by pro-government fighters from Popular Mobilization Units – commonly known by their Arabic name, Hashd al-Sha’abi – are pushing hard to flush out Daesh terrorists, to refrain from “indiscriminate use of firepower” and “do everything possible to protect civilians.”

Iraq’s Kurdish-language Rudaw television network reported late on Thursday that 237 people had been killed in US-led coalition airstrikes on a Daesh-held neighborhood in western Mosul.