Chapter 1797 - 1373: Civilians_4

Shells exploded around the crowd, blocking all major escape routes.

The melee had begun.

Fleeing civilians, armed groups trying to regain control of the civilians, and those who simply gave up control and ran for their lives, were all mixed together.

The sound of gunfire, explosions, and screams intertwined into a symphony of Hell.

Mahmoud saw some armed men trying to seize the dispersed civilians as human shields, attempting to rush through the artillery-covered area.

But as soon as they entered the open areas, they were shot down with precision by the snipers.

Other armed men threw down their weapons, took off their jackets, and tried to blend in with the civilians to escape.

But the drones were surveilling high above, and the thermal imaging easily distinguished who had just fired a gun and who had not.

Massacre.

This was a one-sided massacre.

The shelling lasted for ten minutes.

When the cannon fire stopped, the open ground outside the southern city was strewn with corpses and the wounded.

Of the group of over five hundred people, less than a hundred might have escaped alive into the distant woods.

The 1515 unit, trying to break out, was directly blocked by interceptive artillery fire, frightened, and retreated back into the city.

Mahmoud stepped out from cover, onto the battlefield.

The first thing he saw was the body of a young mother, still holding her child, but neither of them was breathing.

The child's eyes were open, looking at the sky.

Next to them was an old man, his legs blown off, still bleeding, but he was beyond saving.

He looked at Mahmoud, his lips moving, seeming to say something, but no sound came out.

Further away, the corpse of an armed man, still holding a gun, but half his head was gone.

Everywhere was blood, guts, and dismembered limbs.

Mahmoud squatted down, closing his eyes.

It wasn't his first time seeing such scenes, but it would always give him nightmares.

"Sir." A team member came over, voice low, "We found survivors."

Mahmoud looked up, "Bring them over."

The girl was brought over.

She was very thin, her face dirty, wearing a worn floral dress.

She looked at everything around her, neither crying nor fussing, just holding tightly onto a ragged doll.

"What's your name?" Mahmoud asked in Arabic.

The girl did not speak.

"Where is your family?"

The girl pointed to a corpse not far away.

It was a woman, likely her mother, shot in the chest, already dead.

Mahmoud took a deep breath: "Take her to the medical station. Inform the command that we need more medical teams here."

"Yes."

The girl was numbly taken away, still clutching her doll, not looking back.

Mahmoud stood in place, looking at the land that had just experienced a massacre.

The sun had risen, its light reflecting off the pools of blood, glaringly.

The war continued.

East Tikrit District, 7:30 AM.

Samir stood on the turret of a T-72 tank, surveying the street ahead.

His 10th Mechanized Division had already pushed five kilometers into the city, capturing most of the industrial area.

But the closer they got to the city center, the fiercer the resistance.

1515 had set up layered defenses here.

The streets were blocked by barricades, snipers and anti-tank teams lay in ambush within buildings, and suicide bombers were ready to emerge from underground at any moment.

"Third Armored Company reporting." A voice came through the radio: "Concrete barricades spotted at the intersection ahead, request engineer support."

"Approved." Samir ordered, "Engineer platoon move forward, demolish the barricades. Tanks provide fire cover."

Three BMP-2 infantry fighting vehicles moved forward, each followed by an engineer squad. The tank's main gun aimed at suspicious windows, ready to fire at any moment.

The engineers dismounted, swiftly approaching the barricades. They were made of reinforced concrete, three meters high, two meters thick, difficult to blast through with ordinary shells.

They placed explosives, set the fuses, then retreated.

"Detonate!"

The explosion was deafening. The barricade was blasted open with a five-meter-wide gap, concrete debris flying everywhere.

"Tank squad, advance!"

Four T-72s rushed through the gap, turrets rotating left and right to search for targets.

Sure enough, an anti-tank group lay in ambush behind the barricade.

Two RPG rockets flew out from the second-floor window of a building on the right.

The first one missed, hitting the tracks of one of the tanks.

The track broke, immobilizing the tank, but the crew survived, climbing out from the hatch.

The second one headed straight for the lead tank's turret.

But the tank commander reacted quickly, ordering the deployment of a smoke bomb, while the gunner used a coaxial machine gun to spray the window.

The smoke obscured the vision, the hail of bullets caused the enemy to panic, the RPG shooter missed, the rocket flying over the tank.

"Take them out!" Samir shouted.