Civilians who fled their homes due to clashes gather at the Iraqi army’s Camp Tariq, south Falluja, Iraq

FALLUJA —Iraqis who fled ISIS-held Falluja as government and allied forces advanced on the city said they had survived on stale dates and that militants were using food to enlist fighters whose relatives were going hungry.

The militants have kept a close guard on food storage in the besieged city near Baghdad, which they captured in January 2014, six months before they declared a caliphate across large parts of Iraq and Syria.

The militants visited families regularly after food ran short with offers of supplies for those who enlisted, said 23-year-old Hanaa Mahdi Fayadh from Sijir on the northeastern outskirts of Falluja.

“They told our neighbor they would give him a sack of flour if his son joined them; he refused and when they had gone, he fled with his family,” she said.

“We left because there was no food or wood to make fires. Besides, the shelling was very close to our house.”

She and others interviewed in a school transformed into a refugee center in Garma, a town under government control east of Falluja, said they had no money to buy food from the group.

The Iraqi government stopped paying the salaries of employees there and in other cities under ISIS control a year ago to stop the group seizing the funds.

Fayadh escaped Sijir on May 27, four days after the government offensive on Falluja began, with a group of 15 relatives and neighbors, walking through farmland brandishing white flags.

Most of the 1,500 displaced people who found refuge in the school in Garma were women and children, because the army takes men for screening over possible ties with ISIS. Fayadh said she was waiting for news of her two brothers who were being investigated.