Iraq PM orders halt of shelling populated areas in fight with IS

Iraq's Prime Minister Haider al- Abadi said Saturday that he ordered security forces to stop shelling populated areas in all cities that are under the control of militant groups.
"I have issued an order two days ago to stop shelling all cities and populated areas even those under the control of the militants, because we don't want more casualties among innocent people," Abadi, who is also the Commander-in-Chief of Iraqi forces, said at a conference for displaced people in the Iraqi capital of Baghdad.
However, Abadi pledged to continue military operations against al-Qaida offshoot militant group of Islamic State.
"We will not stop chasing them, and we know that they use civilians as human shield, but I won't hesitate for a moment in protecting the civilians," Abadi said.
The United Nations envoy to Iraq Necholay Mladenov, who attended the conference, welcomed Abadi's move to protect civilians.
Earlier in the month, UN agencies in Iraq said that Since January 2014, up to 1.8 million people have been displaced, and nearly half of them are children, by the ongoing violence across the country.
In one city, there were more than 895 people killed and some 2, 625 others wounded in the militants-seized city of Fallujah, some 50 km west of Baghdad, most of them were civilians, a local medical source told Xinhua, citing the data of the city's main hospital.
The security situation began to drastically deteriorate in Iraq on June 10 when bloody clashes broke out between Iraqi security forces and hundreds of IS militants.