[WATCH] 30,000 Fallujah residents displaced in last few days

Zahra recounts her experience as Fallujah came under army shelling in a bid to chase ISIS out of the city

The estimated total number of residents displaced from the Iraqi city of Fallujah in just the last few days has reached 30,000, according to the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC).

32,000 Fallujah residents had already been displaced since the beginning of the military operation to retake the city from ISIS.

Thousands of those displaced were still sleeping out in the open, in warehouses, mosques and schools.

Hundreds of families who reached the displacement camps in Amariyat Al Fallujah, Habaniya Tourist City and Khaldiya were still waiting in the scorching heat to receive tents during the day.

NRC is providing thousands of the displaced with emergency rations of food and bottled water expected to last for three days.

But lack of camp management and coordination make it extremely difficult to reach all of the newly arrived families and to plan for setting up of latrines, kitchens, water facilities, and to deliver medical care and other aid services.

In one newly opened camp in Amariyat Al Fallujah, hosting around 1,800 people, there was only one latrine, for women.

NRC Country Director in Iraq Nasr Muflahi urged the Iraqi government to take charge of this unfolding humanitarian disaster.

“We cannot continue providing aid when we do not even know who is where and what they need,” he said.

“We need the Iraqi government to take a leading role in providing for the needs of the most vulnerable civilians who have endured months of trauma and terror.”

Muflahi said these Iraqi citizens deserved the care and protection of their own government.

“Let us also remind the international donor community of its responsibility towards the Iraqi people, who have been failed time and again by all the wrong policies and interventions,” he said. “They need to provide the funding necessary for this massive crisis now.”