The militant group had launched a desperate bid to make gains amid the Iraqi-led offensive to recapture Mosul. Human rights groups warned of mounting civilian casualties as the fight for Mosul enters its "final stages."
Image: picture alliance/dpa/A. DiCenzo
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The self-styled "Islamic State" (IS) militant group on Saturday started a deadly offensive in Shirqat, south of Mosul, according to Iraqi security services. The attack left more than 30 Iraqi soldiers and civilians dead, with 40 others injured.
About a dozen IS fighters were also killed as Iraqi forces repelled the attack on the Sunni village. The militant group lost Shirqat last year to US-backed government troops and tribal fighters.
Elsewhere, US-backed Syrian rebels pushed the IS jihadists out of a suburb of Raqqa, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported on Saturday. The Syrian city serves as the group's de facto capital. The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), a group of Kurdish and Arab militias, started their attack on the IS stronghold earlier this week.
In October 2016, the Iraqi government launched an offensive to liberate Mosul from the militant group with the help of Kurdish forces, Sunni tribal fighters, Shiite militias and US support.
After monts of fighting, Iraqi-led forces have managed to push the militant group into an enclave in the center of Mosul after capturing the vast majority of the city.
In May, Brett McGurk, the US envoy for the global coalition against the "Islamic State," said the fight to retake Mosul was entering its "final stages," adding that Iraqi forces were "completely defeating" the militant group.
"Credible reports indicate that more than 231 civilians attempting to flee western Mosul have been killed since May 26, including at least 204 over three last weeks alone," the UN human rights chief said.
"Shooting children as they try to run to safety with their families - there are no words of condemnation strong enough for such despicable acts," he added.
The militant group rose to notoriety in 2014, when it seized large swathes of land in Syria and Iraq, culminating in the capture of Mosul. From a historic mosque in the center of Mosul, the militant group's lead Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi announced the created of a so-called "caliphate."
New hope for Yazidi women tortured by IS fighters
A new psychological trauma institute for Yazidi women tortured by the so-called IS is being established at the university of Dohuk in Iraq. It is the first in the entire region.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/A. Martins
Hoping for help
Perwin Ali Baku escaped the Islamic State after more than two years in captivity. The 23-year-old Yazidi woman was captured together with her 3-year-old daughter. "I don't feel right," she says, sitting on a mattress on the floor of her father-in-law's small hut in a northern Iraq refugee camp. "I still can't sleep and my body is tense all the time."
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/A. Martins
Tormenting flashbacks
When Perwin hears a loud voice, she cringes at the thought of her captors. She hopes for help at the newly established institute in Iraq, part of an ambitious project funded by the German state of Baden Württemberg that has already brought 1,100 women who had escaped Islamic State captivity to Germany for psychological treatment.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/A. Martins
Kabarto refugee camp
Members of Germany's 100,000 strong Yazidi community reached out to help the women - and the Baden Württemberg state legislature approved a €95-million program ($106 million) over three years to bring women abused by the IS to Germany. Now, help is on the way on-site in Iraq.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/A. Martins
No trauma treatment - yet
As fighting rages between Iraqi forces and the IS in Mosul only about 75 km from Dohuk, the number of victims that make it to freedom increases daily. 26 psychiatrists work in the semi-autonomous Kurdish region of northern Iraq with its population of 5.5 million and more than 1.5 million refugees and internally
displaced people. None specialize in treating trauma.
Hope on the horizon
German trauma specialist Jan Kizilhan, who has Yazidi roots but immigrated to Germany at the age of 6, is the driving force behind the new institute. The program will train local mental health professionals to treat people like Perwin and thousands of Yazidi women, children and other Islamic State victims.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/A. Martins
Training psychotherapists
The idea is to train 30 new professionals for three years and then extend the program to other regional universities: in ten years' time, there could be more than 1,000 psychotherapists in the area. Students will receive a double master's degree in psychotherapy and psychotraumatology according to German standards, and training from both local and German professors.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/A. Martins
Duty to help
Kizilhan has interviewed thousands of women in refugee camps - and more recently, prospective students for the program's inaugural class: "We are talking about general trauma, we are talking about collective trauma and we are talking about genocide. That's the reason we have to help if we can - it's our human duty to help them."
