( CNN ) -- The 30-mile highway from Kifri to Tuz Khurmatu in northern Iraq is a no-man's-land dotted with motley gatherings of thousands of displaced families , caught between the cruelty of ISIS forces and targeted by militias backed by Iraq 's government . In August , these people lived in towns around Tuz and Amerli , at the epicenter of fighting in which the militias , Iraqi security forces and Kurdish Peshmerga , assisted by U.S.-led airstrikes , supposedly drove ISIS forces ( ISIS calls itself the Islamic State ) from the area . No one stayed to protect civilians from the aftermath ; their homes were looted and burned by militias , they say , after ISIS pulled out . Now , several thousand families from this region , about 90 kilometers south of Kirkuk , are eking out an existence in makeshift shelters along the road , caught between contested territory and the mountains leading to the relative safety of Iraq 's Kurdish region . At a defunct chicken factory , I met some 40 families who said they had been living there for two months without a visit , let alone any assistance , from humanitarian organizations or government officials . Despite warnings from international aid agencies about deteriorating conditions for people displaced by conflict in other parts of Iraq , these communities have been overlooked . Their current residences -- the chicken factory , a school , makeshift tents -- are too dangerous to visit , according to representatives of local humanitarian organizations . A woman named Shahlaa says that like many of the people forced from the towns around Tuz and Amerli , she was displaced twice : first when ISIS entered her town and warned of an impending battle , and then when militias attacked the village to which she had fled with her husband and three small children . `` We did n't get to stay there very long , '' Shahlaa said of the village . After a week she saw dozens of SUVs , armored vehicles and pickup trucks approaching . She watched , terrified , as `` so , so many '' pro-government militiamen dressed in black piled out carrying automatic weapons . `` They started shooting in the air and at the ground , they just wanted to scare us out of there , '' she said . But the militia leniency did n't last very long . After driving ISIS fighters from the area between Kifri and Amerli , the militias began looting and burning homes . Families described how , after running for their lives , they sat on a hillside overlooking their towns and watched them burn . They are not alone . Militias have emptied almost 80 towns of their Sunni residents , a sheikh in Kirkuk told me . Other sheikhs , security and government officials , and some of those displaced have said the same . Yet none of the displaced from these towns has received aid , he said . The sheikh said that militiamen forced him out by setting fire to his home and scrawling their unit names on his walls well after ISIS had left the area : the Badr Brigades , Saraya al-Salam , Kita'ib Hezbollah , and Saraya al-Khorasani . These are all powerful Shia militias with high-level representatives in Iraq 's government . At the chicken factory , Shahlaa gestured to the industrial equipment in a small room where she sleeps alongside 16 relatives . `` Look at where we 're living , '' she said in disgust . The area is particularly windy and rains have become heavier as winter approaches . `` When we left , we barely had time to take anything with us ; we 're sharing blankets , '' she said . `` We 're running out of food and water and we 're running out of money . How will we survive the winter ? '' Not only are these displaced families exposed to the elements , but they also are still caught perilously between ISIS and the militias . One man living in a makeshift camp nearby told me militiamen picked him up a couple of days earlier but released him `` because they decided I was too old . '' But many of his neighbors remain detained , he said . Recently , the United Nations humanitarian agency , the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs , or OCHA , launched a plan to help displaced persons in Iraq , requesting $ 1.6 billion and noting that `` early contributions [ are ] essential with the onset of winter . '' But even if it raises funds , it is unlikely that OCHA or its humanitarian partners will be able to reach the people who most desperately need help in time to save them . The U.S. and Iraqi governments are supporting displaced people in relatively safe areas , but will they be able to reach the 40 families I met -- or others in hazardous conditions -- in time to save them from freezing or starving to death this winter ? Given that the Iraqi government and U.S.-led coalition created the conditions these people are living -- by attacking their areas and often leaving them to the mercy of the militias -- the same governments should now step in to facilitate humanitarian access , lest history makes their `` liberation '' operation look more like a pathway to a massacre . As I left the chicken factory , children swarmed around me , giggling and wanting to show me how they slept like chickens packed into a room . As much as I wanted to , I could n't spare the time . I had already stayed dangerously long and the risk that someone hostile to my presence had noticed -- whether ISIS or a militiaman -- was just too high . I left the factory and its tenants behind , just as they remain out of reach and abandoned by the international community , the authorities in Baghdad and the Kurdistan Regional Government .
Conditions are deteriorating for many displaced in Iraq , says Erin Evers . Governments should facilitate humanitarian access , Evers says . The United Nations has warned that the situation is "catastrophic" and called on all parties to allow aid deliveries into areas under siege by ISIS militants.