Iraqi forces, supported from the air by the U.S.-led coalition, on Monday closed in on the last part of Mosul still under ISIS control. Despite an imminent military victory by Iraqi forces, scores of civilians were slaughtered in a final stand by the terrorist group. Some made it more than three years through the brutal occupation of the nation’s second-largest city only to die in its final days; others, including small children, have known nothing but the reign of savagery in the span of short lives.
“ISIS was just gunning down civilians in the middle of the night as they ran – women and children. We were trying to treat as many people as we could,” Ephraim Mattos, a former Navy SEAL, recalled to Fox News of the deadliest day in the “Battle for Mosul,” which started at the beginning of June. “But bodies were all over the streets. An entire family lay dead right there – an old man, young parents and their baby between them.”
Only the newborn didn’t die from the same gunshot wounds that had befallen the child’s parents, its little head had been cracked open in the fall of that fatal flee for safety. For Mattos, such a sight was only the start of what he was to witness in the coming hours.
The United Nations confirmed that hundreds of residents have been shot and killed by ISIS this month alone, with the most calamitous day being on that June 1 and June 2 as more than 160 were massacred while running from their West Mosul homes.
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