Over 3,800 people displaced amid Mosul operation

Some 904 people were transferred Sunday from Bashiqa and Gayara fronts to a refugee camp in the Sheikhan district south of Mosul, the ministry said in a statement.

Qassim Atiyye, the spokesman for the ministry told Anadolu Agency that the camps for the displaced could accommodate up to 300,000.

Last week, the Iraqi army, backed by U.S.-led coalition airstrikes, launched a much-anticipated operation to retake Mosul, the last Daesh stronghold in northern Iraq.

Daesh captured Iraq’s second largest city in mid-2014 before overrunning large swathes of territory in the country’s northern and western regions.

In recent weeks, the army and its allies have staged a gradual advance on the city, which officials in Baghdad have vowed to recapture by year’s end.