Iraqi soldiers help hundreds flee Fallujah

Hundreds of people fled the Fallujah area on Friday with the help of Iraqi forces who are fighting to retake the city from Daesh, officials said.
“Our forces evacuated 460 people... most of them women and children,” said police Lt. Gen. Raed Shakir Jawdat.
“Hundreds of families from the people of Fallujah have been able to leave,” said Raja Barakat, a member of the security committee for Anbar province, where Fallujah is located.
Umm Omar, who was accompanied by more than 10 members of her family, said they were trapped in the Al-Sijr area on the northern outskirts of the city. Daesh prevented them from leaving, and “gave us food that only animals would eat,” Umm Omar said.
An official from the Norwegian Refugee Council said that most families who have managed to escape “were displaced from areas around Fallujah... and a few were displaced from inside the city.”
“The situation inside Fallujah is getting critical by the day,” said Nasr Muflahi, NRC’s Iraq director.
Meanwhile, security forces fired tear gas as thousands of protesters gathered in central Baghdad on Friday and attempted to head to the Green Zone, a fortified area they have breached twice.
Iraqi Prime Minister Haider Al-Abadi called on the demonstrators, most of them supporters of cleric Moqtada Al-Sadr, to stay home and security forces deployed to block their way to the Green Zone, but the protesters were undeterred.
Demonstrators pushed past security forces at Tahrir Square, breached a barbed wire barrier and attempted to pull down slabs of heavy concrete blast wall blocking Jumhuriyah Bridge.

Source : Arab News