Mosul, Iraq: injured and traumatised children caught up in a gathering 'humanitarian crisis'

22 Dec 2016, 12:00am

Children in camps show clear signs of trauma: mutism, self-harming, bed-wetting

Countless children have been left scarred and deeply traumatised by the extreme violence they have experienced and witnessed. In a hospital in Erbil, capital of the semi-autonomous Kurdistan Regional Government, Amnesty spoke to Umm Ashraf, who described how she and her seven children were injured when a car bomb exploded outside the house where they were sheltering in east Mosul on 13 December, burying scores of people under the rubble of several houses destroyed in the blast. Her eldest daughter, 17-year-old Shahad, lost both her eyes in the attack. 

“Our homes have become our children’s graves. My neighbours are still buried under the rubble; no one has been able to dig them out. I dragged my wounded children from under the rubble one by one. But my sister was killed, I could not help her. My neighbour was decapitated in the blast, so many others killed.

“My children saw my sister being killed in front of them; they saw our neighbour who was decapitated in the strike; they saw body parts on the ground. How can they ever recover from that?

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https://www.amnesty.org.uk/press-releases/mosul-iraq-injured-and-traumatised-children-caught-gathering-humanitarian-crisis