Iraq: Families flee ahead of battle for ISIS-held Hawija
Iraq: Families flee ahead of battle for ISIS-held Hawija
Ten-year-old Amal scrambled to the top of the raised bank, a battered black purse in her left hand.
She paused for a moment, looked around, then stepped gingerly down the other side, over a tangle of barbed wire. Three younger girls, Amal's cousins, giggled nervously as they watched her go.
Amal --"Hope" in Arabic -- was one of a group of about 50 people who fled to Daqouq, this Kurdish town on the plains south of Kirkuk, from their homes around the ISIS-controlled town of Hawija, 60 kilometers (37 miles) away.
They are among people fleeing from the villages around Hawija, often without a specific destination in mind.
At noon we had spotted Amal and the others walking through the dry grass along the Kurdish front lines. Before they approached the raised bank, or berm, Peshmerga -- Kurdish soldiers -- frisked them one by one, and went through their bags at an outpost outside the town of Daqouq.
"We have to take all these measures, searches and interrogations," explained Peshmerga commander. Araz Abdal Rahman, "because there might be someone among them with a bomb."
'They scare me'
Abdal Rahman was the first person to greet Amal after she crossed the berm.
He kissed her on the right cheek, made a quick search through her purse, then motioned for her to join the others by the side of the road, where aid workers handed out chicken sandwiches, biscuits and bottles of water
