Iraq's military said on Sunday it was preparing to launch an offensive to retake the Islamic State militant group (ISIS) stronghold of Fallujah and told residents to get ready to leave before fighting started.
Families who could not flee should raise white flags to mark their location in the city 30 miles west of Baghdad, the military's media unit said in a statement on state television.
Fallujah, a long-time bastion of Sunni Muslim jihadists, was the first city to fall to ISIS, in January 2014, six months before the group swept through large parts of Iraq and neighbouring Syria.
The Iraqi army, police and Iranian-backed Shi'ite Muslim militias, backed by air strikes from a U.S.-led coalition, have surrounded Fallujah since late last year. The jihadists have prevented residents from leaving for months.
The army "is asking citizens that are still in Fallujah to be prepared to leave the city through secured routes that will be announced later", the statement said, without spelling out when any offensive might start.
Deputy district council chairman Fail al-Essawi said three corridors would be opened for civilians to camps west, southwest and southeast of the city, and a subsequent military statement said some residents had begun to flee.
Residents told Reuters about 20 families had set out from a southern front-line neighborhood overnight, but only half of them made it out. Some were intercepted by ISIS, while the others were killed by explosives planted along the road by the jihadists.
The United Nations and Human Rights Watch said last month residents of Fallujah were facing acute shortages of food and medicine amid a siege by government forces. Aid has not reached the city since the Iraqi military recaptured nearby Ramadi, the Anbar provincial capital, in December.
Essawi told a local television channel that more than 75,000 civilians remained in Fallujah, in keeping with a recent U.S. military estimate of 60,000 to 90,000. Around 300,000 people lived in the Euphrates river city before the war.
Known as the "City of Minarets and Mother of Mosques," Fallujah is a focus for Sunni Muslim faith and identity in Iraq. It was badly damaged in two offensives by U.S. forces against al Qaeda insurgents in 2004.
Besides Fallujah, ISIS still controls vast swathes of territory and major cities like Mosul in the north, which Iraqi authorities have pledged to retake this year.
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