"Scores of children have lost their parents in the intense bombard*ment or in booby traps and suicide bombings perpetrated by ISIS. We have given them names to facilitate sorting them out until we can estab*lish their identity and trace their kin to hand them over," said Sukaina Mohamad Ali, the head of the Office of Women and Children in Nineveh province. Ali, who also runs the biggest or*phanage in Mosul, said the organi*zation received children found by Iraqi forces in the debris and near dead bodies. "Most of them had no ID, so we don't know who they are," she said. "They were in a very pre*carious state suffering from malnu*trition and thirst."
Among Mosul's orphans, many are the children of foreign and lo*cal IS fighters killed in battle. "We don't know their exact number be*cause they are dispersed in several refugee camps but there are at least 600 of them staying in Hammam al Alil camp," Ali said. "We received 20 boys who ISIS kidnapped from their families to recruit in their children's unit, the Fetiyen al Jinneh. They are aged 8-11 and we were able to iden*tify them and reunite them with their families." Some of the children at the or*phanage were Yazidis held by IS. Others were Chechen or from dif*ferent Arab nationalities and were taken to Baghdad. The orphanage is expecting 1,700 additional orphans in the next stage.
Iraqi displaced children from Mosul, who were forced to flee their homes due the fighting between Iraqi forces and Islamic state group, were living at the Hamam al-Alil camp on April 7. Many children have been orphaned in the conflict
In addition, some 1,500 women married to slain IS fighters, in*cluding 10 who are pregnant, shel*tered in al-Jadaa refugee camp, fear*ing reprisals from locals, Ali said. "The scale of social problems fac*ing Iraq in post-ISIS areas is over*whelming. Revenge acts can be ex*pected by families who suffered at the hands of the militants no matter how much the government tries to prevent such acts," she said. While there is no government plan to deal with the problem, at*tempts have been made to identify the children by posting photos on social media. "We used all possible means and we succeeded in iden*tifying many, especially those aged between 6 and 8," Ali said.
The children are sometimes har*bored in private homes by fami*lies, volunteer workers and individ*uals such as Iraqi soldier Mohamad Saleh. "While we were battling in the old city we discovered many children alone near the corpses of women. I took home a 3-year-old boy called Ahmad while his 1-year-old brother was transferred to a hospital in Er*bil," Saleh said. "I posted Ahmad's photo on so*cial media, which allowed his un*cles to identify him. They took him away after showing me papers prov*ing their relationship." The near total absence of psy*chological or psychiatric services that could treat the myriad traumas of war will make Iraq's children an even more vulnerable generation.
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