Displaced families live in improvised tents as a result of sectarian violence.BAGHDAD, 13 Nov 2006 (IRIN) - Iraq's Karbala province, 80 km south of the capital Baghdad, is overwhelmed with displaced families and can no longer host and provide services for an additional influx, a local official said on Monday.
"The province is suffering under the pressure of the increasing number of displaced families. Service directorates like health, education and municipality are no longer capable of meeting the needs of more [displaced] families," Ghalib al-Daami, a member of Karbala Provincial Council, told IRIN.
Al-Daami said that as of Saturday the council took the decision to stop hosting displaced families, other then those who could afford to rent houses or those who could take refuge with relatives.
"They should stay at camps unless the government helps with building more hospitals, schools and other service directorates. For example, there are more than 11,000 pupils attending the province's schools and this costs us a lot," he added.
The provincial office of the Iraqi Red Crescent Society (IRCS) said that 70 percent of nearly 8,000 displaced families, about 50,000 individuals, are living in tents at the IRCS camp in the city's main park, in mosques as well as in abandoned government buildings.
"About 30 percent have either ended up with their relatives or have rented houses," said Haitham Dhafir Hussein, director of the IRCS office in Karbala. "We don't have a problem in terms of providing assistance. We are in the process of distributing winter items to them, including four blankets [per refugee], pots, lanterns and detergents."
The IRCS is meeting the needs of displaced families from Baghdad, Babil, Salaheddin, Anbar, Mosul and Diyala, Hussein said.
Earlier this month, the Iraqi Ministry of Displacement and Migration said that sectarian violence had displaced up to 460,000 people since February, when an important Shi'ite shrine was attacked in Samarra. This huge and ongoing movement of people made it increasingly difficult to provide aid to them.
"Nearly 200,000 Iraqis have been registered as homeless in the ministry but thousands of others are displaced or have taken refugee in relatives' homes, making their number much higher," Mowafaq Abdul-Raoof, the ministry's spokesman, told IRIN.
The new homeless figure was based on statistics from the Ministry of Trade, local NGOs and the United Nation's refugee agency (UNHCR), Abdul-Raoof said. According to him, some 16,000 individuals are fleeing their homes on a weekly basis to different neighbourhoods of the capital, Baghdad, or to other governorates in the country.
Reproduced with the kind permission of IRIN
Copyright IRIN 2006
Photo: Copyright Afif Sarhan/IRIN
Disclaimer: This article does not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations or its agencies
