(MENAFN- Tribal News Network) AL-JADAH CAMP, Iraq – When Asma* finally escaped from Mosul's old city it was almost night. Gunfire rang out nearby, and the fading light illuminated the rubble of the al-Habda minaret, once a symbol of Mosul, which had been destroyed by militants fighting for the so-called Islamic State (ISIS).
Asma and her five children were among the last families to flee Mosul's old city when it was liberated by Iraqi forces in July, but they didn't hurry to find refuge. Instead, Asma and her children walked slowly, hungry and afraid, so as not to arouse the suspicions of the Iraqi soldiers.
Asma was the widow of an ISIS militant, and she knew that, although she was leaving Mosul alive, she would never truly escape the war. 'Just tell me where I can get something to eat,' she remembers asking the soldiers as they passed by in their trucks. 'You are a Daesh woman,' they shouted at her, using a pejorative Arabic term for ISIS. 'We will not help you!'
Asma and her husband had come to Mosul from Kirkuk in 2014, after the city fell to the jihadist group. Asma's husband had been working as an English teacher in Kirkuk when ISIS offered him a job translating videos and books.
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