Iraqi violence sparks increase in internal refugees

Baghdad, Dec 29: More than 108,000 displaced Iraqis have registered for government help in the last month, government data showed today, indicating a sharp increase in internal refugees amid soaring sectarian violence.

''The main reason behind the rise in displaced families is the deterioration of the security situation and the death threats that people have received to flee their houses, in addition to the bombing of safe areas,'' Deputy Migration Minister Hamdiya Ahmad told Reuters.

Since the Feb. 22 bombing of a Shi'ite shrine in Samarra sparked a wave of killings between majority Shi'ites and minority Sunnis 72,000 displaced families, or 432,000 people, have registered for government aid, Ahmad said.

The figures represent a steep rise from the 54,000 families -- 324,000 people -- who had registered with the ministry for help until mid-November.

According to UN figures another 100,000 Iraqis a month leave the country.

The displacement is redrawing the sectarian makeup of villages and neighbourhoods as armed groups seek to carve out ''cleansed areas'' in a process some have compared to Yugoslavia during its civil war.

Violence kills an average of at least 100 Iraqis a day.

In Baghdad alone -- where Sunnis are increasingly concentrated in the west and Shi'ites in the east of the city -- 42,000 people have fled their homes since the Samarra bombing, Ahmad said. Baghdad has a population of seven million people.

A large majority of those who have fled their homes come from farmland on the outskirts of Baghdad, Ahmad said.

Armed groups in areas north and south of Baghdad have torched villages and dumped bodies on dirt roads to drive residents out as part of a campaign to create safe routes to and from the capital, US military officials say.

The Shi'ite Middle Euphrates region of Kerbala and Najaf, and the Shi'ite southern provinces have received the largest number of refugees, Ahmad said.

The ministry bases its estimates on an average family size of six people. The government acknowledges that many more people do not register with the ministry or have fled abroad, and so are not counted in its statistics.

Reuters