Meanwhile, many of the civilians from nearby villages are being used as human shields by the terrorists.

Ahmed Saleh and his family live in Qayyarah, an oil town 60 kilometers south of Mosul.
Although the battle ended here over two months ago, clouds of black smoke from burning wells still tell the terror of war, the man said.

"The terrorists came into my home with rocket launchers, mortars and all kinds of weapons.
Eight of them at most, sometimes five, but usually in a unit of two.

They stayed for four, five hours for the attacks, then ran to other places. My children and my wife were all inside when they opened fire. We were terrified,” said Saleh.

In August, the extremists fled into civilian households after failing to stop the security forces from marching into Qayyarah.

It was then the militants began to use local residents as human shields, Saleh said. "They used to set up artillery here.

I told them there were children and old people living here, but the extremists turned a deaf ear to my requests.

They did not allow us to go outside.

They wanted to dodge the firing from security forces and the airstrikes, so they used us as shields," he said.

According to Saleh, militants made many of the local homes temporary bunkers and arsenals.

His family was only freed from the terrorists after two days of extensive shelling the security forces had launched at the town center starting Aug. 23.

Right now Saleh's story is repeatedly going on in the battlefields of Ramadi, Tikrit and Fallujah during the Mosul offensive.

With extremists shuttling civilians from nearby villages, how to defend innocent lives remain one of the most difficult tasks facing the Iraqi army and Kurdish "Peshmerga" forces.

SA - 12