More than 20 people have lost their lives and many more sustained injuries after members of the Daesh terrorist group launched a mortar attack against a medical facility in Iraq’s embattled western province of Anbar.
Eyewitnesses, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the Women's & Children's Hospital in the western part of Fallujah, located roughly 69 kilometers (43 miles) west of the capital, Baghdad, came under heavy militant shelling on Thursday evening, leaving 25 civilians dead and 30 others injured, Arabic-language al-Sumaria satellite television network reported.
The witnesses added that the dead bodies were transferred to the city’s forensic medicine department, while the wounded were taken to the Fallujah General Hospital to receive medical treatment.
Meanwhile, the Kurdistan Democratic Party spokesman in Mosul, Saeed Mamouzini, has announced the death of over a dozen Iraqi children in two hospitals in the militant-held city, situated some 400 kilometers (248 miles) northwest of Baghdad.
Mamouzini said 17 minors died in Mosul’s Khansa Maternity and Pediatric Hospital and the city's main hospital of al-Jomhouri on Thursday due to severe malnutrition and lack of medical supplies.
The Kurdish official added that doctors in the two hospitals have not recorded the cases for fear of reprisal from Daesh extremists.
Gruesome violence has plagued the northern and western parts of Iraq ever since Daesh Takfiris launched an offensive in June 2014, and took control of swathes of Iraqi territory.
The militants have been committing heinous crimes against all ethnic and religious groups in Iraq, including Shias, Sunnis, Kurds, Christians, Izadi Kurds and others.
Units of army soldiers and volunteer fighters are seeking to win back militant-held regions in joint operations.