A military statement said security forces advanced to the edge of Hammam al-Alil, a thermal water resort, after an elite unit breached the eastern limits of Mosul, the ultra-hardline group's last major city stronghold in Iraq.

The battle that started on Oct. 17 with air and ground support from a U.S.-led coalition is shaping up as the largest in Iraq since the U.S.-led invasion of 2003.

Mosul still has a population of 1.5 million people, much more than any of the other cities captured by Islamic State two years ago in Iraq and neighboring Syria.

The United Nations cited reports on Tuesday that Islamic State, which is also known as ISIL, is attempting to displace Hammam al-Alil's estimated population of 25,000 for use as human shields and protection against air and artillery strikes.

"We have grave concerns for the safety of these and the tens of thousands of other civilians who have reportedly been forcibly relocated by ISIL in the past two weeks," U.N. human rights spokeswoman Ravina Shamdasani said.

The town, 15 km (9 miles) south of Mosul, had a pre-war population of 65,000, a local official said.

Aid organizations, local officials and Mosul residents have cited reports that IS has executed dozens of people in Hammam al-Alil and barracks nearby on suspicion of planning rebellions in and around Mosul to aid the advancing troops.

Abdul Rahman al-Waggaa, a member of the Nineveh provincial council, told Reuters last week that most of the victims were former police and army members. The men were shot dead, he said, quoting the testimony of remaining residents of the villages and people displaced from the area.

Security forces advancing north on the western bank of the Tigris River recaptured five villages on Wednesday, the closest of them just 5 km (3 miles) from Hammam al-Alil, according to military statements.

Just across the river from those forces lie the ruins of the ancient Assyrian city of Nimrud, which the Iraqi government says was bulldozed last year as part of Islamic State's campaign to destroy symbols which the Sunni Muslim zealots consider idolatrous. Army troops heading north on that side of the Tigris have yet to reach the area.

The United Nations has said the Mosul offensive could trigger a humanitarian crisis and a possible refugee exodus if the civilians inside in Mosul seek to escape, with up to 1 million people fleeing in a worst-case scenario.

The International Organisation for Migration said nearly 21,000 people have been displaced since the start of the campaign, excluding thousands of villagers taken into Mosul by retreating jihadists who used them as human shields.

Elite Counter Terrorism Service (CTS) troops were the first to breach Mosul's official boundary this week. They said on Tuesday they were in control of the state television station.

A CTS commander, Lt. General Abdul Ghani al-Assadi, told reporters in Bartella, a village east of Mosul, that the unit will pause its advance on the eastern front because of some rainfall early on Wednesday.

"God willing the next stage will begin within hours. This depends on the weather," he said.

A resident of Mosul's eastern Karama district, still under Islamic State control, said on Wednesday four people were killed in artillery fire and air strikes, and said he saw two partially destroyed houses.

"There's a compulsory curfew in our area. The women and children are frightened and the men can't do anything. We can't even help the wounded," the resident told Reuters by telephone.

"One person was wounded by shrapnel in his house and he bled to death. No one could save him. We can't retrieve the bodies. Anyone who leaves his house risks his life."

However residents said the city was quieter than on Tuesday.

Assadi said a curfew had been imposed on the recaptured eastern suburb of Kokjali to protect residents from mortar bombs fired by the insurgents.

Kurdish peshmerga fighters are also deployed on the eastern and northern fronts, and Iranian-backed Iraqi Shi'ite militias are attacking Islamic State west of Mosul.

Some Sunni Muslim volunteers opposed to Islamic State also want to join the battle. Amnesty International said on Wednesday fighters from one group, the Sab'awi tribal militia, tortured and humiliated men and boys in villages southeast of Mosul who were suspected of having ties to Islamic State.

"There is strong evidence that Sab'awi tribal militia members have committed crimes under international law by torturing and otherwise ill-treating residents... in revenge for crimes committed by IS," Amnesty's Lynn Maalouf said.

In one incident, seven men and boys were placed in poultry cages in the middle of a public roundabout. They were brought out one by one, forced to say they were donkeys, and were beaten, Amnesty said.

There have been no reports of abuses by pro-Iranian militias, but their involvement is causing alarm in Turkey which has had troops deployed north of the city since last year to train and support some of the Sunni Arab volunteers.

The Turkish army has begun deploying tanks and other armored vehicles to the town of Silopi near the Iraqi border.

Turkey says it has a responsibility to protect ethnic Turkmens and Sunni Arabs in the area around Mosul, once part of the Ottoman Empire. It fears both Kurdish PKK militants and Shi'ite militias, which the Iraqi army has relied on in the past, will be used in the campaign and stoke ethnic bloodletting.

Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said after a cabinet session in Baghdad on Tuesday that tensions with Turkey have eased in the last week but that Iraq would respond to any "violation" of its territory.</s>BAGHDAD (AP) — The Latest on the Iraqi forces' offensive to retake the Islamic State-held city of Mosul (all times local):



3:45 p.m.



An Iraqi officer says troops have killed eight Islamic State group militants while carrying out house-to-house clearances in the newly-recaptured neighborhood of Gogjali in eastern Mosul.



Lt. Col. Muhanad al-Timimi of the Iraqi special forces tells The Associated Press Wednesday that six of the militants were killed inside a tunnel. He says the other two militants attempted to approach the troops and were shot dead.



One of the militants was wearing an explosives-laden vest.



Meanwhile, hundreds of civilians streamed out of the adjacent neighborhood of al-Samah, some holding white flags. All the women wore niqab, a veil that entirely covers the face or only has a small, slit-like opening for the eyes. All of the men were bearded



___



3:20 p.m.



A human rights watchdog says government-sanctioned tribal Sunni militia taking part in the military operation to retake the Islamic State group stronghold of Mosul have carried out revenge attacks against men and boys in areas recently recaptured from the militants.



London-based Amnesty International said in a statement on Wednesday that fighters from the Sab'awi tribe unlawfully rounded up civilians, beat them with metal rods, gave them electric shocks, placed them in cages and tied some of them to the bonnets of vehicles before parading them through the streets.



The allegations are based on interviews with local officials and eyewitnesses, who said the violations took place in a group of villages located on the south-eastern bank of the Tigris river and under the control of the Sab'wai tribal militia.



Lynn Maalouf, deputy director for research at Amnesty International's Beirut office, describes the violations as "crimes under international law" and adds that Iraqi authorities "must rein in the tribal militia fighters responsible and bring them to justice."



___



1:50 p.m.



Iraqi forces say they are advancing on the southern approach to the Islamic State-held city of Mosul, a front where they have been making slower progress than to the east.



The Commandeer of the Mosul Operation, Lt. Gen. Abdul-Amir Raheed Yar Allah, says in a statement that Federal Police Forces have retaken four villages near Hamam al-Alil area.



A spokesman for the Joint Military Command, Brig. Gen. Yahya Rasool, confirmed that the operation happened on Wednesday morning.



___



12:20 p.m.



Iraqi special forces are going house-to-house in Mosul's easternmost neighborhood of Gogjali where sappers are searching roads for explosives and booby traps Islamic State militants could have left behind before they were driven out a day earlier.



Gen. Abdul-Ghani al-Asadi, the top counterterrorism forces commander, says the special forces had imposed a curfew in the neighborhood while gains there are being consolidated.



Al-Asadi says that "we fear that Daesh militants could attack our forces or the town with mortars." Daesh is the Arabic acronym for IS.



The general also says that "for the safety of the families, we ask them to stay inside their houses." He spoke in Bartella, some 15 kilometers, or 9 miles, behind the front lines.



Brig. Gen. Haider Fadhil says Iraqi special forces arrested three suspected Daesh militants in the area of Gogjali.



___



10:30 a.m.



An aid agency is warning that the lives of more than 1 million civilians trapped inside the Islamic State-held Mosul "are in grave danger" as Iraqi troops advance and set foot inside the city where fighting is expected to intensify.



The Norwegian Refugee Council, which works with refugees and internally displaced Iraqis, says that around 18,000 Iraqis have fled their homes since the start of the massive military operation to retake Mosul over two weeks ago.



The council's Iraq chief, Wolfgang Gressmann, says the agency's aid workers "are now bracing ... for the worst. The lives of 1.2 million civilians are in grave danger, and the future of all of Iraq is now in the balance."



In their battle for Mosul, Iraqi forces for the first time in two years on Tuesday entered the eastern Gogjali and Karama neighborhoods inside Mosul's city limits.



___



10:10 a.m.



An Iraqi special forces general says his troops are holding their positions along Mosul's eastern outskirts as poor weather hampers visibility in operations to rout Islamic State fighters from the country's second-largest city.



Brig. Gen. Haider Fadhil says no advances are planned for Wednesday, as high humidity and clouds obscure the view of aircraft and drones.



From the Mosul neighborhood of Gogjali, which is inside city limits but just outside more urban districts, the guns have gone largely silent, although sporadic rifle cracks could be heard as well as some army artillery fire on IS positions.



The pause comes after Iraqi troops on Tuesday set foot in the city for the first time in more than two years, gearing up for urban warfare expected to take weeks, if not months.</s>GENEVA (Reuters) - Islamic State militants killed 40 former members of the Iraqi Security Forces near Mosul on Saturday and threw their bodies in the Tigris river, U.N. human rights spokeswoman Ravina Shamdasani said on Tuesday, citing reports from the field.

IS also tried to transport about 25,000 civilians from Hammam al-Alil, a town south of Mosul, on dozens of trucks and minibuses during the hours of darkness early on Monday, probably for use as human shields in defense of IS positions, she said.

Most of the trucks, which were heading toward the Tal Afar district, turned back under pressure from patrolling aircraft, but some buses did reach Abu Saif, 15 km (10 miles) north of Hammam al-Alil, she said.

“We have grave concerns for these and tens of thousands of other civilians who have reportedly been forcibly relocated by ISIL (Islamic State) in the past two weeks,” she said.

IS fighters were taking people closer and closer to Mosul city and putting them close to their offices and to installations that could constitute military targets, Shamdasani said.

“That seems to support the assertion that they are planning to use these people as human shields, as well as ensuring that the area is heavily populated with civilians to frustrate a military operation against them,” she said.

“They are also killing some people that they are abducting, especially people who formerly belonged to the Iraqi Security Forces.”

The 40 former Iraqi soldiers killed on Saturday were among civilians who had been abducted earlier from the al-Shura sub-district of Mosul and from villages around Hammam al-Alil.

There may be many more, Shamdasani said, adding that the U.N.’s reports were “raw information” from reliable sources and were by no means comprehensive.

Although there would be a “temptation for revenge” against captured IS fighters, the U.N. had not documented any such abuses, and it welcomed the Iraqi government’s pledge to put protection of civilians at the heart of their strategy, Shamdasani said.

She also said there were no reports of coalition air strikes killing civilians, including those people being held as human shields.</s>An Iraqi special forces soldier peeks through a hole in a door as his unit gets ready to search a compound in Gogjali, an eastern district of Mosul, Iraq, on Wednesday (AP photo)

BAGHDAD/BARTELLA, Iraq — US-backed Iraqi forces moved closer on Wednesday to a town south of Mosul where aid groups and regional officials say the Daesh terror group has executed dozens of prisoners.

A military statement said security forces advanced to the edge of Hammam Al Alil, a thermal water resort, after an elite unit breached the eastern limits of Mosul, the ultra-hardline group's last major city stronghold in Iraq.

The battle that started on October 17 with air and ground support from a US-led coalition is shaping up as the largest in Iraq since the US-led invasion of 2003.

Mosul still has a population of 1.5 million people, much more than any of the other cities captured by Daesh two years ago in Iraq and neighbouring Syria.

The United Nations cited reports on Tuesday that Daesh is attempting to displace Hammam Al Alil's estimated population of 25,000 for use as human shields and protection against air and artillery strikes.

“We have grave concerns for the safety of these and the tens of thousands of other civilians who have reportedly been forcibly relocated by ISIL [Daesh] in the past two weeks,” UN human rights spokeswoman Ravina Shamdasani said.

The town, 15km south of Mosul, had a pre-war population of 65,000, a local official said.

 Aid organisations, local officials and Mosul residents have cited reports that Daesh has executed dozens of people in Hammam Al Alil and barracks nearby on suspicion of planning rebellions in and around Mosul to aid the advancing troops.

Abdul Rahman Al Waggaa, a member of the Nineveh provincial council, told Reuters last week that most of the victims were former police and army members. The men were shot dead, he said, quoting the testimony of remaining residents of the villages and people displaced from the area.

Security forces advancing north on the western bank of the Tigris River recaptured five villages on Wednesday, the closest of them just 5 km from Hammam Al Alil, according to military statements.

Just across the river from those forces lie the ruins of the ancient Assyrian city of Nimrud, which the Iraqi government says was bulldozed last year as part of Daesh’s campaign to destroy symbols which the extremists consider idolatrous. Army troops heading north on that side of the Tigris have yet to reach the area.

The United Nations has said the Mosul offensive could trigger a humanitarian crisis and a possible refugee exodus if the civilians inside in Mosul seek to escape, with up to 1 million people fleeing in a worst-case scenario.

The International Organisation for Migration said nearly 21,000 people have been displaced since the start of the campaign, excluding thousands of villagers taken into Mosul by retreating extremists who used them as human shields.

Elite Counter Terrorism Service (CTS) troops were the first to breach Mosul’s official boundary this week. They said on Tuesday they were in control of the state television station.

A CTS commander, Lt. General Abdul Ghani Al Assadi, told reporters in Bartella, a village east of Mosul, that the unit will pause its advance on the eastern front because of some rainfall early on Wednesday.

“God willing the next stage will begin within hours. This depends on the weather,” he said.

A resident of Mosul’s eastern Karama district, still under Daesh control, said on Wednesday four people were killed in artillery fire and air strikes, and said he saw two partially destroyed houses.

“There’s a compulsory curfew in our area. The women and children are frightened and the men can’t do anything. We can’t even help the wounded,” the resident told Reuters by telephone.

“One person was wounded by shrapnel in his house and he bled to death. No one could save him. We can’t retrieve the bodies. Anyone who leaves his house risks his life.”

However, residents said the city was quieter than on Tuesday.

 Assadi said a curfew had been imposed on the recaptured eastern suburb of Kokjali to protect residents from mortar bombs fired by the insurgents.

Kurdish peshmerga fighters are also deployed on the eastern and northern fronts, and Iranian-backed Iraqi Shiite militias are attacking Daesh west of Mosul.

Some Sunni Muslim volunteers opposed to Daesh also want to join the battle. Amnesty International said on Wednesday fighters from one group, the Sab’awi tribal militia, tortured and humiliated men and boys in villages southeast of Mosul who were suspected of having ties to Daesh.

“There is strong evidence that Sab’awi tribal militia members have committed crimes under international law by torturing and otherwise ill-treating residents... in revenge for crimes committed by [Daesh],” Amnesty’s Lynn Maalouf said.

In one incident, seven men and boys were placed in poultry cages in the middle of a public roundabout. They were brought out one by one, forced to say they were donkeys, and were beaten, Amnesty said.

There have been no reports of abuses by pro-Iranian militias, but their involvement is causing alarm in Turkey which has had troops deployed north of the city since last year to train and support some of the Sunni Arab volunteers.

The Turkish army has begun deploying tanks and other armoured vehicles to the town of Silopi near the Iraqi border.

Turkey says it has a responsibility to protect ethnic Turkmens and Sunni Arabs in the area around Mosul, once part of the Ottoman Empire. It fears both Kurdish PKK militants and Shiite militias, which the Iraqi army has relied on in the past, will be used in the campaign and stoke ethnic bloodletting.

Iraqi Prime Minister Haider Al Abadi said after a Cabinet session in Baghdad on Tuesday that tensions with Turkey have eased in the last week but that Iraq would respond to any “violation” of its territory.</s>(IraqiNews.com) Nineveh – Media officials with the Ministry of Defense announced on Monday, that the security forces started to advance toward the west coast of Mosul from three axes.

The officials said in a press statement, “Forces from the Anti-Terrorism Directorate, army’s 9th Armored Brigade, 3rd regiment of 1st brigade and infantry’s 16th brigade started, at dawn today, to advance toward the west coast of the city of Mosul from three axes.”

“The sons of Iraqi Armed Forces are fighting honorably to liberate the west coast of Mosul,” the officials added.

Security forces from the army, al-Hashd al-Watani and Kurdish Peshmerga continue advancing in the liberation battles of Nineveh, backed by the international coalition and Iraqi aviation.</s>A military statement said security forces advanced to the edge of Hammam al-Alil, a thermal water resort, after an elite unit breached the eastern limits of Mosul, the ultra-hardline group's last major city stronghold in Iraq.

The battle that started on Oct. 17 with air and ground support from a U.S.-led coalition is shaping up as the largest in Iraq since the U.S.-led invasion of 2003.

Mosul still has a population of 1.5 million people, much more than any of the other cities captured by Islamic State two years ago in Iraq and neighboring Syria.

The United Nations cited reports on Tuesday that Islamic State, which is also known as ISIL, is attempting to displace Hammam al-Alil's estimated population of 25,000 for use as human shields and protection against air and artillery strikes.

"We have grave concerns for the safety of these and the tens of thousands of other civilians who have reportedly been forcibly relocated by ISIL in the past two weeks," U.N. human rights spokeswoman Ravina Shamdasani said.

The town, 15 km (9 miles) south of Mosul, had a pre-war population of 65,000, a local official said.

Aid organizations, local officials and Mosul residents have cited reports that IS has executed dozens of people in Hammam al-Alil and barracks nearby on suspicion of planning rebellions in and around Mosul to aid the advancing troops.

Abdul Rahman al-Waggaa, a member of the Nineveh provincial council, told Reuters last week that most of the victims were former police and army members. The men were shot dead, he said, quoting the testimony of remaining residents of the villages and people displaced from the area.

Security forces advancing north on the western bank of the Tigris River recaptured five villages on Wednesday, the closest of them just 5 km (3 miles) from Hammam al-Alil, according to military statements.

Just across the river from those forces lie the ruins of the ancient Assyrian city of Nimrud, which the Iraqi government says was bulldozed last year as part of Islamic State's campaign to destroy symbols which the Sunni Muslim zealots consider idolatrous. Army troops heading north on that side of the Tigris have yet to reach the area.

The United Nations has said the Mosul offensive could trigger a humanitarian crisis and a possible refugee exodus if the civilians inside in Mosul seek to escape, with up to 1 million people fleeing in a worst-case scenario.

The International Organisation for Migration said nearly 21,000 people have been displaced since the start of the campaign, excluding thousands of villagers taken into Mosul by retreating jihadists who used them as human shields.

Elite Counter Terrorism Service (CTS) troops were the first to breach Mosul's official boundary this week. They said on Tuesday they were in control of the state television station.

A CTS commander, Lt. General Abdul Ghani al-Assadi, told reporters in Bartella, a village east of Mosul, that the unit will pause its advance on the eastern front because of some rainfall early on Wednesday.

"God willing the next stage will begin within hours. This depends on the weather," he said.

A resident of Mosul's eastern Karama district, still under Islamic State control, said on Wednesday four people were killed in artillery fire and air strikes, and said he saw two partially destroyed houses.

"There's a compulsory curfew in our area. The women and children are frightened and the men can't do anything. We can't even help the wounded," the resident told Reuters by telephone.

"One person was wounded by shrapnel in his house and he bled to death. No one could save him. We can't retrieve the bodies. Anyone who leaves his house risks his life."

However residents said the city was quieter than on Tuesday.

Assadi said a curfew had been imposed on the recaptured eastern suburb of Kokjali to protect residents from mortar bombs fired by the insurgents.

Kurdish peshmerga fighters are also deployed on the eastern and northern fronts, and Iranian-backed Iraqi Shi'ite militias are attacking Islamic State west of Mosul.

Some Sunni Muslim volunteers opposed to Islamic State also want to join the battle. Amnesty International said on Wednesday fighters from one group, the Sab'awi tribal militia, tortured and humiliated men and boys in villages southeast of Mosul who were suspected of having ties to Islamic State.

"There is strong evidence that Sab'awi tribal militia members have committed crimes under international law by torturing and otherwise ill-treating residents... in revenge for crimes committed by IS," Amnesty's Lynn Maalouf said.

In one incident, seven men and boys were placed in poultry cages in the middle of a public roundabout. They were brought out one by one, forced to say they were donkeys, and were beaten, Amnesty said.

There have been no reports of abuses by pro-Iranian militias, but their involvement is causing alarm in Turkey which has had troops deployed north of the city since last year to train and support some of the Sunni Arab volunteers.

The Turkish army has begun deploying tanks and other armored vehicles to the town of Silopi near the Iraqi border.

Turkey says it has a responsibility to protect ethnic Turkmens and Sunni Arabs in the area around Mosul, once part of the Ottoman Empire. It fears both Kurdish PKK militants and Shi'ite militias, which the Iraqi army has relied on in the past, will be used in the campaign and stoke ethnic bloodletting.

Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said after a cabinet session in Baghdad on Tuesday that tensions with Turkey have eased in the last week but that Iraq would respond to any "violation" of its territory.</s>Members of an Iraqi familiy wait at a checkpoint at Makhmour in northern Iraq on their way home to a liberated village south of Mosul on Sunday, Oct. 30, 2016.

QAYARA, Iraq — Traffic on the road from the Kurdish capital Irbil to towns and villages south of Mosul is largely made up of refugees returning to homes recently liberated from the Islamic State and Iraqi troops headed for Mosul, the last militant stronghold in Iraq.

Tens of thousands of civilians fled to Irbil when the Islamic State rampaged through the area two years ago. They sought sanctuary in a city that has been virtually untouched by the war raging nearby, its rhythm of daily urban life posing a stark contrast to the devastation in villages recently recaptured from the Islamic State by Iraqi army and Kurdish peshmerga forces.

On the road southwest out of the city, trucks and buses full of civilians heading home must pass through multiple checkpoints manned by the peshmerga and Iraqi army soldiers still wary about surprise attacks by militants operating behind the front lines.

The return of displaced people comes at a good time for authorities, who expect hundreds of thousands of civilians to escape Mosul as fighting there increases.

Many of those returning home from Irbil over the weekend, were traveling to villages near Qayara Airfield West, where U.S. forces are providing support fire and advising Iraqi commanders during the Mosul campaign. U.S. military vehicles aren’t part of the traffic.

American personnel and supplies headed for Qayara have been arriving by air since the runway reopened in early October following repairs by Air Force engineers.

The road passes through Makhmour, where the Islamic State advance toward Kurdistan was stopped by the Kurds in August 2014. The site of the battle is marked by a collection of blackened, battle-damaged military vehicles destined for the scrapyard.

Faisal Hammed, 25, a police officer from Qayara, was on the road Sunday in a convoy of three trucks and two busses carrying 70 men, women and children from eight families.

Waiting to pass a checkpoint in Makhmour, Hammed sat at the wheel of a large blue truck. In the back were a dozen women, boys and girls sitting on top of a collection of mattresses and furniture.

The father of three said he fled to Irbil after the Islamic State killed his uncle and daughter by firing into their home. He feared that he would be targeted after the militants obtained a list of members of the police force.

“We knew they were terrorists and wanted to kill everybody,” he said.

The displaced civilians share the road with convoys of Iraqi troops and military vehicles headed to and from the front lines.

One of the soldiers headed for the front, Pvt. Hussein Abdullah, 35, a Sunni from Mosul, was in Dohuk when the militants came to his home town in 2014. His parents are still in Mosul, where his father works as a mechanic. Abdullah said he hadn’t seen them since the city fell to the Islamic State.

The militants told people in Mosul that they would help them, as fellow Muslims, to fight the government, but everything went wrong after they arrived, he said.

“They fought with the people and killed them and destroyed the churches and stole from the banks and destroyed Iraqi culture in Mosul,” he said.

Between Makhmour and Qayara, the road surface is scarred by the battle. Every mile or so, the asphalt changes to dirt and stone where someone has filled in culverts that were blown up, presumably to slow the advance of opposing forces. Some of the craters caused by the roadside bombs are big enough to swallow a bus.

Villages on the east side of the Tigris River are almost completely abandoned except for the occasional “Ali Baba” — looters scavenging for items the Islamic State neglected to pilfer or destroy.

Some buildings have been flattened by the fighting. Others are riddled with bullet holes and one has Arabic graffiti scrawled on it that reads: “Long live Iraq, Death to the Islamic State.”

Two large sections of the main bridge over the river near Qayara are missing, possibly victims of the same saboteurs who blew up the culverts.

To get to the other side, traffic is diverted several miles downstream, through a village and along a dirt road to a pleasant, grassy area where the Iraqi army guards a one-lane pontoon bridge. Troops have festooned the area with colorful flags and tents.

On the west side of the river many of the houses are still empty. But shops are already open in Qayara’s main street despite at least a dozen nearby oil fires that blanket the town with black smoke.

Hammed said his own home was destroyed by the militants, who stole all his possessions. He’s planning to stay with relatives while he rebuilds. And he doesn’t expect to be the only person relying on the kindness of others.

“Now families will come from Mosul to Qayara. We can take them into our homes because we know what it is like to be displaced,” he said.</s>(JTA) – Following the U.S. election to the United Nations Human Rights Council, Secretary of State John Kerry criticized the body for its “biased focus on Israel.” The United States was one of 14 members elected to the council by the U.N. General Assembly on Oct. 29 in New York. “While important challenges remain, including ending the Council’s excessive and biased focus on Israel, we look forward to cooperating with other Council members to address human rights concerns, advance human rights around the world, and ensure the Council fully realizes its purpose,” Kerry said following the U.S. election to the council after a one-year hiatus. In addition to the United States, Brazil, Croatia, Egypt, Hungary, Iraq, Japan, Rwanda, Tunisia, Cuba, Saudi Arabia, China, South Africa and Great Britain will serve on the council in 2017. Israel is the only country with a permanent spot on the council’s agenda.
United Nations Human Rights Council spokeswoman Ravina Shamdasani says ISIL militants killed 40 former Iraqi Security Forces members and threw their bodies in the Tigris river near Mosul on Saturday.