Flight from Mosul

An estimated half a million people have fled Mosul and the surrounding area after the city was seized by Islamist militants. Many people simply crossed the River Tigris to avoid the fighting. Others made their way to the border with the nearby semi-autonomous Kurdish region.

Security forces have been placed on maximum alert. The militants belong to an offshoot of al-Qaeda known as ISIS, which is active in both Iraq and neighboring Syria and aims to establish an Islamic state. On Wednesday (11.06.2014) jihadists also took control of Tikrit, just 150 kilometers north of Baghdad.

Cars carrying refugees backed up in a giant traffic jam outside the Kurdish city of Erbil, around 80 kilometers east of Mosul.

The Khabat checkpoint on the outskirts of Erbil was flooded with refugees from Mosul. The assault on their home city began on Sunday night. Insurgents waving black banners pushed out security forces, raided government buildings and captured military vehicles.

Refugees waited for hours in the hot sun to register at the checkpoint manned by the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG). Iraqi Kurdistan was established as a semi-autonomous entity in 1992, after the first Gulf War, and has its own local government and parliament.

Kurdish security forces oversaw the entry of refugees into the Kurdistan region. The Kurdish infantry is the only available source of fresh troops in the region. The KRG may want to ask for economic concessions from the government in Baghdad in return for providing active military support. Soldiers and police in Mosul were said to have fled along with residents.

This family fled their home in Mosul with a 15-day-old baby. For now, they have to stay in a temporary refugee camp outside Erbil.

The prime minister of Kurdistan, Nechirvan Barzani, has requested help from the UN refugee agency in providing emergency food and shelter for the displaced people arriving in the region.

In the meantime, local Kurds have been bringing in food for the refugees.

With the summer sun beating down hard on the thousands of displaced people, helpers distributed bottles of water.

Residents still in Mosul reported on Wednesday that gunmen had been knocking on doors, telling locals they would not be harmed and urging civil servants to return to work. One day after ISIS militants seized control the situation was said to be calm but tense, as other cities also came under attack.