Iraqis dread new night callers, flee homes in droves

BAGHDAD, May 26 (Reuters) Sometimes it's a word in the ear from a neighbour, maybe a threatening note left by the door, a sinister phone call or just a vague, creeping sense of dread.

Then again it can be gunmen taking over the street and slaughtering friends and family before your eyes -- whatever it is that persuades Iraqis to grab their children and flee their homes in the night, they are doing so in growing numbers.

In listing ''stopping deportations'' among priorities for his new national unity government, Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has acknowledged a nascent problem likened to the ''ethnic cleansing'' of the Balkans in the 1990s. But few expect a quick solution.

''I came out of the house and found there was a piece of paper on my windshield,'' said Abbas Mohammed, a 28-year-old minibus driver, recalling the moment he knew that as a Shi'ite he was no longer safe in Baghdad's Sunni rebel stronghold of Amriya.

''It said: 'Leave within 72 hours or you will taste our vengeance'. We left the next day and now live with my aunt.'' ''It's hard to lose your memories, your friends,'' he said. ''But the government isn't able to get me back home safely now.'' In Baghdad alone, officials say 30-50 people are being killed each day in sectarian violence -- often abducted and tortured -- since February's bombing of a major Shi'ite shrine in Samarra.

The numbers leave no one in any doubt about the reality of the threats.

''We left home when two of our Sunni neighbours were shot,'' said Ahmed Salam Abdullah, 35, a Sunni civil servant who quit the home he owns on one of the capital's sectarian faultlines.

Now he has joined Baghdad's swelling army of itinerant homeless, unable to afford to rent somewhere else and moving week by week from one relative to another.

''The government can't defend itself so it can't protect us. So I can't go home.'' SHRINE ATTACK Officials say 100,000 people have registered as ''displaced'' in the three months since the Samarra bombing. But many more go uncounted, quietly seeking refuge with family or heading abroad.

A midnight visit from the secret police was the great anxiety in what was dubbed the ''Republic of Fear'' under Saddam Hussein; now Iraqis dread waking to find someone has scrawled ''Go or die'' on a note by the gate or daubed it on a wall.

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