More than 750,000 Iraqis displaced since US invasion: UNHCR - Yahoo! News
More than 750,000 Iraqis displaced since US invasion: UNHCR - Yahoo! News: "Fri Oct 20, 10:21 AM ET
GENEVA (AFP) - 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) has said.
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Iraqis were also fleeing abroad in tens of thousands every month, it said Friday.
'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 Shiite 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."
