Jun 16, 2017

The UN said Friday that Islamic State group jihadists may be holding more than 100,000 Iraqi civilians as human shields in the Old City of Mosul.

Iraqi forces are fighting to retake Mosul from IS, after the jihadist group overran the city in 2014, imposing its brutal rule on its inhabitants.

The UN refugee agency's representative in Iraq Bruno Geddo said IS had been capturing civilians in battles outside of Mosul and had been forcing them into the Old City, one of the last parts of the city in their grip.

"More than 100,000 civilians may still be held in the Old City," Geddo told reporters in Geneva.

"We know that ISIS moved them with them as they left… locations where the fighting was going on," he said, using another acronym for