(26 Oct 2016) As Iraqi forces close in on the militant-held city of Mosul, thousands of residents who fled from there more than two years ago are watching the advance from a camp some 70 kilometres (43 miles) away.
Twenty seven year-old Faris Khatham was a carpenter before he fled Hamdaniyah, a small mostly Christian and Shabak village on Mosul's eastern outskirts.
In Baharka camp for displaced Iraqis he's a barber and over the past few days he's been watching Iraqi forces fighting the Islamic State (IS) group in the streets of his hometown.
Khatham says he's happy the operation has begun, but at times it's also difficult to watch.
On the television above the chair where he trims hair, he said he often switches to watching sports, when the news is overwhelming.
Mosul fell to IS in the summer of 2014 when the group stormed across large swaths of northern and western Iraq, forcing millions of civilians to flee and plunging Iraq into the country's more critical political and security crisis since the 2003 US-led invasion.
The operation to retake Mosul was officially launched just over a week ago and fighting was still ongoing in a belt of villages and towns around Mosul to the north, east and south of the city.
Maj. Gen. Haider Fadhil said the Iraqi special forces reached a village located 6 kilometres (4 miles) from the eastern edge of Mosul on Tuesday.
Over the past day more than 300 civilians were evacuated from the village of Tob Zawa to the city's east, according to Fadhil.
Aid groups warn that more than a hundred thousand additional civilians could be forced from their homes by the operation to retake Mosul.
Katham, the barber, said he can't wait to return home, but even after civilians are allowed to go back to territory once held by IS, he doesn't expect life to pick up where it left off.
Baharka camp outside Irbil, the capital of Iraq's Kurdistan region, houses just a fraction of the more than a million people already uprooted by IS in Iraq's north.
The camp is home to more than 4,000 people, almost all from Mosul, according to the camp's management.
AP spoke to one man from central Mosul who asked to be known by his nickname Abu Omer, as his brother is still in the city and he did not want him to get into any danger.
Omer, who also wanted his identity hidden on camera, described Mosul as his "mother."
He said while he knows liberation will come with the cost of destruction, it's worth it for him to be able to return home.

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