title: 400,000 children still displaced from Mosul fighting: Save the Children
text: BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Around 400,000 children are still displaced from the fighting for Mosul, one year after the start of a military offensive to recapture the Iraqi city from the Islamic State, Save the Children said on Monday. Islamic State s self-declared caliphate effectively collapsed in July, when U.S.-backed Iraqi forces re-took Mosul, the group s de facto capital in Iraq, after a grueling nine-month battle.  Just because the fighting in Mosul has stopped doesn t mean the humanitarian needs aren t great. If anything, children need our help now more than ever - those that are still displaced and those that are returning to see what s left of their homes,  said the London-based charity s Iraq country director, Ana Locsin.  Large parts of Mosul have been reduced to rubble; schools, homes, hospitals, roads, playgrounds and parks. I ve spoken to dozens of children haunted by their experiences, left with psychological scars that ll take years to heal,  Locsin said in a statement. With the fall of Mosul and other small towns in  the country s north and west, the only area still under control of Islamic State in Iraq is a stretch alongside the western border with Syria, where the militant group is also in retreat. 