By Ibrahim Saleh

BAGHDAD 

Over 7,000 civilians have fled war-battered western Mosul within the last 24 hours, Iraq’s Ministry of Displacement and Migration said Thursday.

“On Wednesday, the ministry received 7,292 people fleeing Mosul’s southwestern Al-Mamoun, Al-Dandan, Josaq and Al-Samah districts,” Ministry Undersecretary Jassem al-Ateyya said in a statement.

According to al-Ateyya, displaced persons are being provided with shelter in the Al-Jadaa and Al-Haj Ali camps, located some 60 and 30 kilometers respectively southeast of Mosul.

The undersecretary put the total number of people to have fled western Mosul since mid-February -- when the army launched fresh operations to capture the city -- at 31,621.

Thamer Najib al-Suhail, who heads a ministry field team in southern Mosul, said the ministry was now working with army and police personnel to evacuate remaining civilians from combat areas.

In mid-February, Iraqi forces -- backed by a U.S.-led air coalition -- began fresh operations aimed at purging Daesh terrorists from western Mosul.

The offensive comes as part of a wider campaign launched last October to retake the entire city, which Daesh overran -- along with much of northern and western Iraq -- in mid-2014.