For Umm Mohammed and other residents of areas of war-battered west Mosul recaptured from Islamic State group jihadists, this year's Muslim holy month of Ramadan carries a bitter taste.

Iraqi forces pressed forward Monday with an offensive against jihadist-held areas of Mosul as the United Nations warned of grave danger to civilians in the final stages of the battle.

In the battle against jihadists in northern Iraq, the village of Sayramun was recaptured in February but remains as isolated as ever and crucially still has no drinking water.

The horrific wounds and gruesome accounts of the victims filling a frontline clinic in west Mosul in Iraq offer a window on the hell inside the last jihadist strongholds.

Leaning on his crutch, Nizar picks through the rubble where the main building of Mosul University used to be, looking for whatever administrative documents can still be salvaged.

He is part of a unit of four volunteers working relentlessly to bring the university back to life three months after the damage it suffered during an Iraqi offensive against the Islamic State group.

Satellite dishes have been sprouting on the rooftops of east Mosul since it was retaken from the Islamic State group, who punished anyone caught with a dish with the lash.

"Now we know what is happening in the world," Mohammad Turki says as he installs one in the Al-Qahira district.

Bilal Abduljabbar clambers onto the back of an Iraqi army truck with his two teenage children to start the final stage of their escape from war-torn west Mosul.

When the Islamic State group controlled eastern Mosul, playing music was a crime punishable by lashes. Today, music stall owner Mohammed Mohsin is making up for lost time.

The jihadists' religious police confiscated and burned his CDs after taking over the city in a lightning 2014 offensive.

Iraqi forces seized a third of west Mosul and trapped Islamic State group fighters inside as they made further gains in their battle to retake the city, officials said Sunday.

Twenty-six thousand Iraqis fled west Mosul in the 10 days since security forces launched a major push to retake it from jihadists, the minister of displacement and migration said Wednesday.