UN refugee agency seeks $ 60 mln aid for Iraq

GENEVA, Jan 8 (Reuters) The UN refugee agency (UNCHR) today appealed for 60 million dollars in emergency help for hundreds of thousands of Iraqis forced to flee their homes by the unremitting violence.

The agency said it expected the number of Iraqis living away from their homes but still inside Iraq, the so-called internally displaced, to rise to 2.3 million in 2007, up from 1.7 million at the end of 2006.

Another two million, out of an Iraqi population of 26 million, have fled abroad, mainly to Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt and Turkey, the agency said.

But as with the internally displaced, much of this movement took place before the 2003 overthrow of former President Saddam Hussein.

''The longer this conflict goes on, the more difficult it becomes for the hundreds of thousands of people displaced and the communities that are trying to help them -- both inside and outside Iraq,'' said UN High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres.

According to the UNHCR, the Iraqi exodus is the ''largest long-term population movement in the West Asia since the displacement of Palestinians'' following the creation of Israel in 1948.

Reuters BDP GC2129