As one million people are still trapped in ISIS stronghold Mosul, refugees tell of public executions and floggings
Public executions, women sold as sex slaves, and streets full of suicide bombers - those who can flee Mosul are lucky
AS she fled for her life through the bullet-pocked streets of Mosul, Halya Salih’s way was blocked by Islamic State brides wearing suicide belts.
But the mum of six had seen too much blood spilt inside the depraved caliphate to turn back.
A Sunni Muslim like her ISIS tormentors, she witnessed public executions, floggings for possessing a single cigarette and saw a price list for sex slaves on public display.
Her son-in-law was shot just for being a government employee.
And divorced Halya watched as the Iraqi city prepared for leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi’s wedding to a teenage ISIS recruit from Germany.
Now at the Khazir refugee camp in Iraq, Halya, 54, gestures towards black clouds from torched oil wells near Mosul. The falling soot has turned the long-legged sheep black.
She says: “It was two years of hell. So when the women wearing the suicide vests stopped me and my daughter Habiba I said, ‘What are you doing? Why don’t you surrender?’.
“They said, ‘No, we are fighting for Islam. We will fight to the death’.
“I saw my neighbour’s body lying in the street but I carried on walking to safety with others, waving a white flag.
“Now I hope Daesh [ISIS] fighters will be executed in public, just like they did to others.”
Halya, Habiba, 25, and 42,000 other innocent civilians have fled al-Baghdadi’s crumbling caliphate.
But a million-plus others are believed to be trapped inside the besieged city, caught in the crossfire between Iraqi special forces fighting to liberate it and ISIS suicide squads defending their position two years after capturing it.
At least 105 ISIS fanatics have blown themselves up during the three-week campaign. The terror group has also dug a network of booby-trapped tunnels beneath the dusty streets.
Halya — not her real name — paints a vivid picture of the horrors of al-Baghdadi’s empire.
Christians were ordered to flee, convert or die, with ISIS’s barbaric interpretation of Islam maintained by religious police patrols.
The former security guard, who lived in the eastern Samah neighbourhood, recalls: “You could be killed for using a mobile phone in public and flogged 50 times for possessing one cigarette.
“Older women like me could get away with leaving only the eyes uncovered in public. But younger women, like my daughter, had to be completely covered,
“If a young women was found in the streets uncovered, her husband, father or brother would be flogged 20 times and fined.
“If a bus driver was found with a women passenger with her eyes uncovered, he would get 20 lashes.”
The fighters soon came for Halya’s son-in-law, who “tried to hide” before being killed and thrown into the al-Khafsa sinkhole.
The deep, natural crater in the desert just south of Mosul, al-Khafsa was a favourite place to dump bodies.
A tearful Habiba recalls seeing two alleged spies publicly executed six months ago, with jihadis treating it as a spectator event.
She says: “There was a massive crowd in the centre of Mosul. The two prisoners looked as if they had been drugged to stop them screaming. They chopped off their heads and placed them on their bellies. Daesh were yelling, ‘God is great’.
“A woman next to me in the crowd said, ‘God doesn’t want this’. I prayed that Daesh would be gone.”
Halya, who has relatives in Britain, said three other “spies” were hung by their ankles from Mosul’s Freedom Bridge. They were dead three days later. She also saw a sex slave price list alongside photos of captured women from the Yazidi minority displayed in an IS court.
She says: “There were hundreds, with prices ranging from £400 to £8,000 depending on age and beauty.
“They were arranged in groups according to who owned them. It was awful, God created everyone.
“Once, a man bought one of the women to save her and smuggled her out to Kurdistan. When Daesh found out they executed him.”
A woman next to me in the crowd said, ‘God doesn’t want this’. I prayed that Daesh would be gone.
Jobs were scarce as the city economy crumbled, with workers offered £40 a week to help IS dig tunnels or make bombs.
However, one cold day Halya noticed the Sukar district getting an expensive spring clean.
She explains: “We heard through my daughter’s friends that al-Baghdadi was to marry a Daesh fighter’s sister. They cleaned the streets, asphalted the potholes, put up street lights then blocked the area off. There were snipers on the rooftops.”
Arab media reported that al-Baghdadi married a German teenage ISIS recruit in March 2015.
As Iraqi security forces continue their push through Mosul, Halya says foreign ISIS recruits with families fled before the operation began, some of them disguised as women.
The fighters who remained were “left feeling very twitchy” and would “dive for cover every time they heard a plane in the sky”.
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Halya and Habiba made their escape when initial gunfire ceased. Now at the packed Khazir camp, 12 miles from Mosul, they are among thousands whose families have been torn apart.
However, some live to be reunited. Waad Zainal, 41, reached through the wire to clutch either side of brother-in-law Mofaq Jwad’s face as both men wept.
Waad, a civil servant, tells me: “My wife and children fled Mosul when ISIS arrived and made it to safety in Kurdistan.
“But Mofaq and his family were trapped in that hell.”
Their wives — sisters Marwa, 29, and Safaa, 27 — are too overcome with emotion to speak. Marwa’s children, Miriam, ten, and eight-year-old Zain, break down too.
In a tiny cinder-block room with two mattresses on the floor, Halya and Habiba hold each other.
They won’t return to Mosul — even if ISIS is defeated there — and plan to move to another Iraqi city.
Halya adds: “Daesh will have sleepers in Mosul, sympathisers.
“We have escaped from hell and will never go back.”