People fleeing Mosul. Romina Peñate/Demotix. All rights reserved.
“The night before we first saw IS militants in our streets we couldn't sleep because of the sound of the fighting outside. But when we got up in the morning we were totally surprised. Our home is very close to a military post, less than a kilometre away. Even outside of our house all over the ground there were military uniforms, helmets, boots and also guns. The army had fled, and they abandoned weapons to the value of millions of dollars on the streets and in their barracks."
Telling me this was Fuad, a young doctor in his mid-twenties whom I met in a refugee camp of Yazidi Kurds from Shengal in Turkey. Located on a former military base, the camp was surrounded by snow-streaked mountains. Pale-skinned and wearing a thin moustache, Fuad was himself from Mosul.
