Mass displacement in Mosul may start in less than a week: UN

The operation to liberate Mosul from IS forces may lead to a flood of refugees displaced from their homes due to the fighting, the UN warned today according to AFP.

"It's a trickle right now," Lise Grande, the UN's humanitarian coordinator in Iraq, told journalists, referring to displacement caused by the operation.

But "our expectation, based on what the military has briefed us, is that if we start to see significant population movements, it's likely to be within five to six days," Grande said.

"So as they're moving toward the city, there is not an expectation that we're going to have mass outflows. But the military has said that... we could see that within five to six days," she said.

According to Grande, 200,000 people being displaced "is a working scenario" for what might happen "in the first couple of weeks" - a number that may rise significantly as the operation goes on.

The UN has previously warned that the operation may spark a humanitarian crisis, displacing up to a million people.