Story highlights ISIS militants, under fire from Iraqi-led forces, are taking human shields as protection

Asa'ad and his family were forced out of their homes and made to walk towards Mosul

They managed to escape and returned to their village, which is now eerily empty

Tulul al Nasir, Iraq (CNN) "They told us, 'You are going to have to walk to Hammam al Alil,'" says Asa'ad. "We knew that it would be long and we took blankets and bread."

This was the moment, late one afternoon last week, that ISIS militants came to Asa'ad's village, rounding up families and forcing them onto the road north towards Mosul. Some of the ISIS fighters were foreigners, some Iraqi. The man who came to their door, he says, was Syrian.

It has become an all-too-familiar story: As ISIS retreats from the villages it has occupied for the last two years, it forces civilians -- including toddlers and the elderly -- to leave their homes. They become human shields, frog-marched toward Mosul and used by the militants as cover from air strikes.

Asa'ad is thin and prematurely grey; his rheumy eyes tell of a life of hard graft. He and his wife Sardiye and their three young daughters live in Tulul al Nasir, a modest farming community on the left bank of the Tigris River, 30 kilometers (18 miles) south of Mosul.

Some 600 families in Tulul al Nasir were marched out of the village, he says. Some were put in trucks and cars; many were on foot. ISIS fighters snapped at their heels, driving them onwards.

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