Sick people traffickers charge refugees £2,500 to escape Mosul – as Iraqi army starts liberating ISIS’ terror city
People traffickers are cashing in by charging £2,500 for locals to flee the besieged city of Mosul, it has been revealed.
ISIS forces have turned the Iraqi city into a booby-trapped fortress and have imposed a curfew as government and Kurdish forces move in from all sides.
Mosul is still home to more than 1.5 million people and families with money are paying smugglers to sneak them out of Mosul and take them 80 miles over the border into Turkey.
It is feared there could be a huge loss of civilian lives with ISIS forces determined to fight to the death against overwhelming odds.
Dissident group Mosul Eye – whose bloggers have been bravely Tweeting information from Mosul since Iraq’s second largest city was over-run by Islamic State – revealed details of the trade.
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The group said: “More than 18 people & families have escaped Mosul 2 Turkey safely & successfully. The Syrian Kurds r the 1s supervising smuggling ops.
“The cost to escape Mosul to Turkey is $3000 per person. A new escape route was established in the past couple of weeks.”
The prime minister of Iraq has urged the terror group to surrender as government troops close in.
Haider al-Abadi appeared on state TV wearing combat fatigues and said: "They have no choice. Either they surrender or they die."
Iraqi special forces are now about 0.6 miles away from Mosul's eastern edge and preparing to enter.
Units of the army are meanwhile advancing from the south.
Using another name for IS, Mr al-Abadi said: "We will close in on Daesh from all angles and God willing we will cut the snake's head. They will have no way out and no way to escape."
Mr al-Abadi is the commander-in-chief of the Iraqi armed forces.
Units of the Iraqi military recaptured some villages to the east, north and south of Mosul on Monday, according to the army.
It is unclear when the final offensive on Mosul will begin, and resistance from IS in the city has intensified.
About 50,000 Iraqi security forces personnel, Kurdish Peshmerga fighters, Sunni Arab tribesmen and Shia militiamen are involved in the offensive, which began more than two weeks ago, to drive IS militants out of their last major urban stronghold in the country.
Mosul fell to the jihadists in June 2014 and their leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, chose a mosque in the city as a place to proclaim the establishment of a 'caliphate'.
Before the offensive began on 17 October, there were believed to be between 3,000 and 5,000 militants remaining in Mosul, along with up to 1.5 million civilians.
More than 17,700 residents have fled so far and, according to the UN's worst-case scenario, as many as 700,000 others could follow.