By Shamal Aqrawi

ARBIL, Iraq, Jan 23 (Reuters) A Christian shopkeeper who walks with a limp, Adison Brikha fled Baghdad after he was beaten in his shop. He made it to Arbil, in relatively peaceful Iraqi Kurdistan -- but now he's begging for work.

''The gunmen broke into my shop in New Baghdad district and beat me brutally. It was obvious that Christians are no longer wanted in Baghdad,'' said Brikha, who can barely pay the rent for a tiny house in Arbil for his family of five.

''I used to own a shop and now I'm begging people to let me work even as a servant or a labourer, but no one will take me because my foot is crippled,'' he said, through tears.

Tens of thousands of people have fled Baghdad, the epicentre of violence in Iraq. The United Nations, launching an appeal for aid for Iraqis who have fled their homes or left the country, said this month about one in eight Iraqis is now displaced.

It said the exodus is the largest long-term movement of people in the West Asia since the creation of Israel in 1948.

Many, including non-Kurds, have taken refuge in Kurdistan -- a largely autonomous region in the northern mountains that has been a haven from attacks plaguing other areas since the US invasion of 2003.

But as refugee numbers grow, authorities in Arbil, the Kurdish capital with a population of about a million, are beginning to feel the strain.

''Over the last two weeks, more than 9,000 people came to Arbil escaping from Baghdad as refugees, and they are mainly Sunnis and Christians,'' Imad Marouf, head of the disaster relief program in Arbil, part of the Iraqi Red Crescent, told Reuters.

HALF A MILLION IRAQIS FLEE The UN says nearly 500,000 people fled to other areas within Iraq last year, mostly since the February bombing of a Shi'ite shrine in Samarra prompted a surge in violence.

While much of the violence is between Shi'ite and Sunni Muslims, others have been caught up in it.

In a human rights report on January 16, the United Nations said that of the 1.5 million Assyrian Christians living in Iraq before 2003, half had fled the country and many of the rest were moving to ''safe areas'' in the north of Iraq.

The main Chaldean Christian college and seminary in Baghdad -- closed for months due to threats and violence -- relocated to Arbil this month, according to Bishop Rabban al-Qas of Arbil.

Both Christians and Muslims were targets of violence.

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