Caritas warns of heavy civilian casualties in Mosul
conflict
(Vatican Radio) The head of
the Catholic aid and development agency, Caritas Internationalis, has warned
the conflict in the Iraqi city of Mosul will cause heavy civilian casualties
and will not be “a clean war” to rid the city of so-called Islamic State
militants.
The Secretary General of the
global Caritas confederation, Michel Roy also accused world leaders of “double
standards” and of pursuing national interests in Syria and Iraq, rather than
considering the interests of the civilian populations of those two countries.
Voicing his fears to Vatican
Radio, Roy warned there are 1.250.000 civilians in Mosul, and so the “war which
is starting now on the city” means that “there will be lots and lots of
civilian people killed in Mosul”. His words came as thousands of people fled
from the city on Wednesday while Iraqi troops and tanks moved in to try and
recapture it from Islamic State control.
Comparing the claims of a
“clean war” in Mosul with the conflict in the Syrian city of Aleppo, Roy said
“we shouldn’t have double standards in what is happening there”. He said
“people are dying, people are suffering in Aleppo, and there are war crimes in Aleppo,
and tomorrow there will be already now people dying and people suffering in
Mosul and also war crimes committed by the other side, and [….] we’ve become
kind of indifferent on this”.
United Nations agencies are
also gearing up for what they fear may be a huge humanitarian crisis caused by
the conflict.
The Caritas Secretary General
urged what he called “the main powers, the USA, the European Union, Russia” to
“stop fighting, stop bombing”, adding that “this is not the way forward”. Roy
acknowledged that Islamic State or Da’esh is “a real big terrorist
issue”, even if, he said “I am sure at some time they will also want to sit and
talk”.
But he insisted that “What
the U.S. wants in the Middle East, what Russia wants in the Middle East is not
for the good of the Middle Eastern people, it’s for their own interests and
that has to stop”. Echoing the words of Pope Francis, Roy urged world leaders
to “look at things in a different way” and work to bring the warring parties to
the negotiating table for the good of all people in the region.
The Caritas leader cited the
example of the way the Lebanese civil war ended in 1995 as “an example to
follow for Syria”. He said the combatants must “come and sit at the table and
decide about their future together”. While the international community has to
facilitate this, he stressed they “don't have to decide for the people and,
especially in Syria, if they decide for the people, that [war] will never end.
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