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In pictures: Tales of tragedy emerge as the battle for Mosul rages on

With the ongoing conflict in Middle East, Mosul, Iraq\'s second largest city, is now a bloody battlefield where Iraqi forces, Kurdish fighters and ISIS are battling it out in a bitter fight.

"Tens of thousands" of people have been used as human shields, 232 civilians shot dead and around 9,000 people have been displaced so far as a result of the Mosul military operation, the largest in Iraq in 13 years.

The fighting ahead in a city that is still home to 1.5 million people will be more complex over the next few weeks as compared to the the recent capture of Christian and Sunni Muslim villages and towns outside the city as they were mostly emptied of their residents.

War has always been an ugly thing, wreaking destruction in its path. In this humanitarian catastrophe, millions of people are streaming out of Mosul in search of safe shelter now.

These images reveal the the atrocities that are a daily occurrence in a conflict zone.

Text by Sehar Qazi. Photos curated by Vikas Kumar