More than 750,000 Iraqis have been displaced by violence since the US-led invasion of their country in March 2003 and their resources are running out, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said on Friday. Iraqis were also fleeing abroad in tens of thousands every month, it said.
"We remain extremely concerned about the rapidly deteriorating situation in Iraq and the ongoing displacement this is creating both inside and outside Iraq," UNHCR spokesman Ron Redmond told a news conference in Geneva.
He said nearly half the 0.75 million internally displaced Iraqis had been forced to flee their homes in the past eight months because of the sharp rise in sectarian attacks that had followed the destruction in February of a holy Shia shrine in Samarra, north of Baghdad.
"Our Iraq unit estimates 754,000 Iraqis have been internally displaced since 2003 -- some 365,000 of them just since February in sectarian violence sparked by the Samara bombings," he said.
Central Iraq was the worst affected by these mass exoduses of Shia fleeing to Shia areas, Sunnis to Sunni zones, he said. Most tried to stay with relatives but host families and resources were now becoming worryingly scarce.
"It's very, very large numbers of people and after months and months they are running out of resources and the host families and the organisations who are taking care of them are also running out," he explained.
The number of Iraqis forced to abandon their homes since the US-led war started over three and a half years ago was now nearly as high as the number of people displaced during the entire regime of Saddam Hussein, the UNHCR said.
"Figures from the government of Iraq, UNHCR and its partners indicate that more than 1.5 million people are presently displaced inside Iraq, including some 800,000 who fled their homes prior to 2003, as well as the 754,000 who have fled since. "An additional 20,000 people are presently estimated to be temporarily displaced, awaiting the end of military operations in their towns and regions," Redmond said.
Another 1.6 million Iraqis had taken refuge in other countries in the region, most in Syria and Jordan. Many had been displaced from their country for over a decade, having left Iraq during Saddam's reign. But now they were pouring out of Iraq in their tens of thousands every month, Redmond said.
"Many have been outside Iraq for a decade or more but some 40,000 Iraqis are now arriving in Syria alone each month," he said.