If ever a little girl deserved to cry it is ten-year-old Aysha. For three days without food or water, she had clung desperately to her mother as the terrifying battle to liberate Mosul from the clutches of the barbaric Islamic State raged outside their home.
When salvation finally arrived, in the form of burly Iraqi troops, she bravely fought back tears and with fear, trauma and relief etched across her pretty face desperately thanked her rescuers, offering even to kiss their feet.
Their village of Kafer, 18 miles from the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, has been under the control of the Islamist fanatics since 2014 when the army fled in the face of their ruthless advance.
But last Thursday following days of relentless air strikes and fierce fighting, liberation finally came.
TV cameramen captured the moment when little Aysha, wearing a sparkly T-shirt and pink leggings, was rescued by an armed military police unit that has been fighting alongside the Iraqi Army as they fight to regain territory from the murderous IS.
Barely able to contain her emotions, clutching biscuits and bottled water handed to her by the soldiers, she poured out as if fearful she would not survive to tell the full horror of her ordeal: ‘I’m so thankful to you. I thought you would never come for us. We have had no food or water for three days and it was just me and my mother, my father was taken and killed by the terrorists.
‘The IS men have taken away so many children from my village and we don’t know what happened to them. Some of them died. The men made my mother give them her money and jewels and we have had nothing. Thank you, thank you. I would like to kiss your feet.’
Instead the soldier beside her, in his armour-plated vest, affectionately leaned down to kiss the top of her head, then scooped her into his arms and carried her off to safety.
She and her mother were taken to the nearby village of Qayyarah, already cleared of IS fighters, but elsewhere the deadly battle continued. In the latest developments:
- The US-led coalition was accused of killing dozens of civilians in an air strike on a funeral procession in the town of Daquq, with Russia claiming the strike had ‘all the signs of a war crime’;
- IS hit back in the city of Kirkuk, killing more than a dozen members of the Iraqi security forces;
- The fanatics launched a rocket attack on an Iraqi convoy in a town near Mosul that had been recently retaken;
- As many as 1,000 people were treated for breathing problems after IS deliberately set light to a sulphur plant and oil wells.
IS overran Mosul, Iraq’s second-biggest city, and surrounding areas in June 2014 and terrorised its 1.5 million residents, abducting young boys to recruit as fighters and girls to be their sex slaves.
All normal life closed down. Children could not attend school and families barricaded themselves in their homes in fear.
Yesterday I saw signs of life in one grey and ghostly settlement on the banks of the River Tigris that had been deserted when IS raised its black flags. Now residents are coming back to Qayyarah to reclaim their homes and lives.
But I found an oil-blackened cloud darkening the entire village as I drove through it, the result of sabotage by retreating IS fighters who also set light to 13 oil wells in an act of revenge.
Creative in their evil, IS also attacked a chemical factory at nearby Mishraq, releasing poisonous sulphur into the atmosphere. Choking and coughing ourselves from the noxious fumes, there were reports that nine people had died and many others were taken to hospital.
SOURCE: Daily Mail
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