http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article2640418.ece UN warns of five million Iraqi refugees
Half of displaced people have no access to food aid
By Patrick Cockburn
Published: 10 June 2007
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Across Iraq, millions of people are looking for safer places to live, and not finding them. The United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) reported last week that 4.2 million Iraqis have been forced out of their homes.
There are also ominous signs that the four-month-old US security plan for Baghdad is failing to reduce the level of violence despite an extra 17,000 US troops in the capital.
"The situation in Iraq continues to worsen," the UNHCR announced, "with more than two million Iraqis now believed to be displaced inside the country and another 2.2 million sheltering in neighbouring states."
The Iraqi refugee crisis is now surpassing in numbers anything ever seen in the Middle East, including the expulsion or flight of the Palestinians in 1948.
Since the sectarian pogroms that followed the destruction of the Shia shrine in Samarra in February 2006, an estimated 850,000 people have been displaced within Iraq, including 15,000 Palestinians who have nowhere to go.
"Individual governorates inside Iraq are becoming overwhelmed by the needs of the displaced," said an UNHCR spokesperson, Jennifer Pagonis. "At least 10 out of 18 governorates have closed their borders, or are denying access to new arrivals."
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