There were reports that children and women were killed or injured due to different kinds of shelling and airstrikes on Mansour neighborhood in West Mosul.
@shvm_90 said in a Tweet: “Heavy shelling and brutal air and artillery aimed at reviving #right side [of Mosul] and the strongest was on #Mansour neighborhood and the fall of victims from children and women”
Amnesty International field researchers interviewed survivors, later sharing their notes with Airwars: “We tried to find any way to survive in our house. We found some desks from a school, and we burned them for the heat. We used to make bread using the fire. These were very hard days for us, full of hunger and fear. We just sat there, hearing the sound of the mortars and the airstrikes. Shrapnel was falling through the air like rain. We sat together, all of us, huddled together, near the wall, waiting for a bullet to come through the wall and kill us.
We were on the ground floor of the house, moving between two rooms, for 14 days. We knew the glass would fly in the house if our house was hit, so we used wood, metal, anything we could to cover the windows. We slept on the floor, on a few cushions. It felt like the explosions never stopped.
We weren’t as afraid of the airstrikes, because the airstrikes were targeting specific locations. What we were afraid of was the mortars, because they were striking everywhere.
On 7 March, there was a mortar attack on our house. Usually everyone was inside, but at that time, XXXX and XXXX were outside. [XXXX – 16 years old; XXXX – 15 years old. They left their tent and joined the interview at this point, and showed us their injuries – XXXX had an injury from the shrapnel on her head, which was visible, and XXXX said that she had shrapnel on her back.]
XXXX: We were outside, chatting in the garden. It was a sunny day. Suddenly there was a strong explosion. I think it was a mortar.
Different interviewee: “We heard something hitting the roof. There were two floors in the building, and the top floor collapsed, and the fence outside was destroyed.”
Separate interviewees told Amnesty the following: “On 7 March, around 2pm in the afternoon, there was a big attack on our neighbour’s house. Their house is about 50 meters away from our house. A family of injured people ran to our house. They had injuries on their heads, their faces, their legs. There was blood everywhere. All of the injuries were from shrapnel. Some of us tried to help them, because we knew a little bit of first aid.
Second interviewee
There was a big attack on 7 March. We were staying in al-Mansour, in a house with 40-50 other people – four or five families. Six IS fighters were using the house. They were standing in the front of the house when the attack came. Around 2pm, I heard the sound of the planes, and then the rockets came. There were two rockets, and they destroyed three houses near to the house we were in. The houses were collapsed. I was probably 50 meters away from the strikes. There were two big explosions, and dust, sand, and shrapnel was everywhere. We didn’t go to the collapsed buildings, because we expected there might be another attack – that had happened before. Some of the people from the attack came into our house. One person later died, from the injuries he had from the shrapnel. Another person had an injury on her jaw.”
The local time of the incident is unknown.
