Mosul's humanitarian crisis as important as battle for city

For the past 14 years, Iraq has lurched from one multi-ethnic, multi-religious conflict to another.

Some 10,000 to 12,000 refugees are fleeing the western part of Mosul every day - a great exodus from a city that once numbered five million.

Residents have been driven out by heavy shelling and street-to-street combat between the Iraqi Army and Islamic State - but they are also exhausted and desperately hungry.

Lisa Grande, the person leading the UN's humanitarian response in the country, has spent her career working in some of the largest humanitarian crises in the world and knows the next one lurks just around the corner in Iraq.

She said: "There's something that people do not realise.

"The successful protection and, if necessary, relocation of residents from west Mosul is just as important as the battle for the city itself."

With parts of IS-controlled west Mosul under siege by the Iraqis, the price of basic supplies has skyrocketed.

"It is a catastrophe," one woman told us as she boarded a bus for the refugee camps.

"There is famine, there is hunger. One kilo of onions costs 180,000 dinars (£122). One kilo of sugar is one million to 1.4 million dinars (£680-950). This is my neighbourhood."

Their requirements are straightforward and immediate - a place to stay, food and clean water, and health care to keep people alive.