Bomb blast in Iraq kills 18 civilians trying to flee Islamic State

A bomb blast on Friday killed 18 civilians, among them women and children, who had fled the Islamic State-held Hawijah area in northern Iraq, officials said.

The deaths highlight the extreme danger faced by civilians trying to flee areas held by the IS. Civilians are being targeted by the militants as they seek to escape and then have to navigate bombs the group has planted.

Hawijah is a town in Iraq's Kirkuk province that was seized by IS along with swathes of other territory in the summer of 2014.

Police Colonel Fatah Hassan said the displaced Iraqis had left the Hawijah area on foot and were picked up by police who were transporting them to the west when the bomb ripped through the vehicle.

Hassan and Iraqi lawmaker Mohammed Tamim confirmed that 18 displaced Iraqis had been killed.

Hassan said one of the policemen trying to help them was also killed, while other police officers and displaced civilians were wounded.

An image obtained from police of the aftermath of the blast showed a badly burned body in the back of the twisted remains of a white pickup truck.

The charred remains of a woman and at least one other victim lie on the dirt road behind the truck.

Hassan said the truck had apparently run over a bomb, but he later said that the blast appeared to have originated inside the vehicle, and may have been caused by explosives potentially placed by IS inside bags the women were carrying.

Lamia Haji Bashar, one of two Yazidi activists who in October won the European Parliament's prestigious Sakharov human rights prize, previously lost an eye and suffered burns to her face when one of her friends stepped on a bomb while they were fleeing Hawijah.

Bashar and Nadia Murad, the other activist, were both enslaved and raped by IS, which has carried out a campaign of massacres and kidnappings targeting members of the Yazidi minority.

Farther west, Iraqi forces are fighting to retake the IS-held city of Mosul, where a million-plus civilians still live.

Fighting has been limited to the city's outskirts for now, but aid workers fear that the battle may result in mass displacement of civilians as it progresses.

Those fleeing Mosul will also be exposed to bombs planted by IS, as well as the danger of being caught up in the fighting between security forces and militants.

US-backed Iraqi forces on Wednesday moved near a town south of Mosul where aid groups and regional officials say IS has executed dozens of prisoners who refused to act as human shields, as leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi called on his militants to resist.

"Do not retreat," said a voice presented as belonging to al-Baghdadi in an audio message released early on Thursday by the IS-affiliated Al-Furqan media. "Holding your ground with honour is a thousand times easier than retreating in shame," he said in the message, his first in more than a year. It was not clear if the IS leader was in Mosul or elsewhere.

A military statement said security forces advanced to the edge of Hammam al-Alil after an elite unit breached the eastern limits of Mosul, IS's last major city stronghold in Iraq. The battle that started on 17 October with air and ground support from a US-led coalition is shaping up as the biggest in Iraq since the US-led invasion of 2003.

Mosul still has a population of 1.5 million people, more than any of the other cities captured by IS two years ago in Iraq and neighbouring Syria.

The UN cited reports on Tuesday that IS was attempting to displace Hammam al-Alil's estimated population of 25,000 for use as human shields and protection against air and artillery strikes.