Beirut: At sunrise, Mohammad Auda Shalaan led a convoy of five vehicles laden with civilians out of the Iraqi city of Fallujah.
After two years living under the black flag of jihad, the 350,000 people of this sprawling conurbation beside the Euphrates are now in the path of a huge offensive by government forces.
Shalaan drove past the carcasses of burnt-out Iraqi army vehicles, before reaching the southern suburbs. His plan was to gather as many friends and neighbours as possible and drive them to safety, away from both the gunmen of Daesh and government soldiers.
But every family seemed to be missing someone. “I was shouting: ‘Where is everyone else’?” said Shalaan. “One woman told me that her husband was taken. Another said her father, another said her son.”
All of the missing had been abducted by Daesh for a terrible purpose. “Daesh took all of them into the centre of Fallujah to use them as human shields,” said Shalaan.
As Iraqi forces close in on Fallujah, they are facing what is essentially a citywide hostage crisis. Some 1,700 Daesh fighters are believed to be holding perhaps 50,000 civilians in the centre of the city, hoping that government troops and their Shiite militia allies will refrain from launching an all-out assault for fear of killing innocents.
“It has become one of the world’s largest prisons,” said Eisa Al Eisawi, the exiled mayor of Fallujah. “They are just waiting for us to save them.”
Shalaan gathered everyone he could find and loaded them into the vehicles. It was only as they started to drive towards government lines that a group of terrorists opened fire with Kalashnikovs. Two women were killed in the back of Shalaan’s Toyota and a third injured. They were just a few miles drive from safety.
Daesh is escalating its violence as its reign over Fallujah reaches a bloody denouement. Men and boys who refuse to fight for the terrorists are being executed, said the United Nations, while women and children are being dragged from their homes to be used as human shields.
The residents now face a desperate choice. Do they stay put and risk starvation or death? Or do they try to flee and hope to outrun their Daesh captors?
Even if the city is “liberated”, the mainly Sunni population of Fallujah still has reason to fear. Iraqi government troops are being supported by Iranian-backed Shiite militias, who in the past have massacred Sunni civilians and plundered their homes.
It was this sense of vulnerability to a government in Baghdad that helped Daesh’s rise to power in Fallujah in 2014.
The city has been under siege for months, but the government’s long-awaited offensive finally began on Sunday, supported by dozens of air strikes from US and coalition warplanes. Shiite militias, known as the Hashd, attacked Fallujah’s south-eastern suburbs.
The terrorists, trapped between government forces coming from the east and the Euphrates to the west, responded by sending suicide car bombs towards the advancing infantry.
“They are using suicide bombers in their attack on us because they are too scared to meet us face-to-face in battle,” said General Abdul Wahab Al Saadi, the Iraqi army commander in charge of the offensive.
On Friday, the Pentagon said that US air strikes had killed over 70 Daesh fighters in Fallujah, including Maher Al Bilawi, the terrorist movement’s commander in the city.
Not all of the Daesh fighters are totally committed to their cause. Gen Al Saadi said that some terrorists were shaving their beards and trying to blend in with civilians.
As the bombs fell, a woman named Ishwaq gathered her four children. The family had only just staved off starvation by living on dates, yoghurt and water. But as their home in Fallujah’s Andalus neighbourhood shook under the bombardment, they decided to flee.
“We had to get out,” she told staff from the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC), an aid agency.
They gathered in a house with 16 other families, but word of their movements reached a Daesh patrol, which pulled up in front of the home on bicycles. The fighters began beating the men and were threatening to kill everyone when a respected elderly man convinced the terrorists to stop.
At 2am a chain of men, women, and children slipped out of the house and began creeping through the darkness and away from Fallujah. “My feet were hurting so badly because we had to run all night long,” said Ishwaq’s nine-year-old son, Mohammad.
The group crossed canals and crawled through drainage pipes to avoid being spotted. As the sun rose, they reached an Iraqi government checkpoint and waved a white flag. The family have now reached a camp run by the NRC.
Only around 150 families have been able to make such escapes since last Sunday, according to the aid agency. Fewer and fewer civilians are managing to flee as the bombardment of Fallujah intensifies and Daesh tightens its grip and kidnaps hostages.
Almost of all of those who did manage to get away were from the edge of the city. Only a handful have escaped from the city centre, where Daesh is believed to be holding its human shields.
One father was running from Fallujah with two children under his arms only to step on a landmine. All three were killed.
Ishwaq said she feared for relatives who are still trapped. Power cuts and damaged phone towers mean that few people are able to contact the outside world.
Al Eisawi, the mayor, estimated that Daesh would be defeated in Fallujah within 10 days. But he said he dreaded the destruction that will probably come with liberation.
Fallujah was the scene of two fierce battles in 2004 when the US Marine Corps retook the city from Sunni insurgents, but left much of it in ruins.
Al Eisawi is also worried that Daesh will plant booby traps in order to render the city uninhabitable long after they are driven out. Recalling the ordeal of a neighbouring city, he said: “We may see another Ramadi, where every street is destroyed.”
Shaalan, the rescue driver, has lost three brothers to Daesh’s terrorists. He is now responsible for their children. He is willing to return to Fallujah to rescue any friends or relatives who might be left. “I will keep trying but my hope is very weak,” he said. “I’m afraid that thousands of civilians will be killed.”