US group warns of crisis of displaced Iraqis

WASHINGTON, Jan 30 (Reuters) More than half a million people have fled their homes in Baghdad in the last year due to sectarian violence and a million more could be forced out by mid-year, a US medical charity said.

California-based International Medical Corps (IMC), which has more than 300 staff in Iraq, said the pace of people displaced was rising at a ''dramatic rate'', particularly in the capital, which has a population of about 6 million.

''It is a very tough situation. There is a terrible security situation there with an increasing number of people who are displaced,'' said Nancy Aossey, president of the group.

A study by her group found 80 per cent of the nearly 550,000 Iraqi civilians who had fled their homes since the February 2006 bombing of a Shi'ite shrine in Samarra, were in Baghdad. The Samarra bombing triggered a wave of sectarian killing.

She said if the violence continued at its current rate, more than a million more people would leave their homes in Baghdad within the next six months, with most of them staying inside Iraq rather than going out of the country.

''There needs to be much more focus on this,'' Aossey told Reuters. ''Regardless of what anyone thinks of the war, people are suffering,'' she added.

The United Nations says some 1.7 million people are internally displaced inside Iraq and about 2 million more are sheltering outside the country. Many of those who are outside of Iraq fled before the March 2003 US invasion.

''It is a brewing humanitarian crisis of enormous proportions,'' Aossey said.

The IMC said the moves were reshaping the city's neighborhoods along sectarian lines and straining the ''already fragile economic and social fabric'' of those communities hosting displaced people.

Unlike earlier displacements of people after the March 2003 US invasion of Iraq, the current exodus appeared more permanent, with people abandoning or selling their homes.

Many of these people had poor access to food and irregular supplies of government rations resulting from the deteriorating security situation created further strains.

The IMC said ill-equipped health care centers in Iraq could not cope with extra patients. ''There is a chronic shortage of medication, lab materials and X-ray films in the country which renders many health facilities useless,'' it said.

Aossey appealed to the world to help, particularly in getting people health care and steady food supplies.

Asked about a rise in displaced persons across Iraq, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said the United States was concerned about this and that it underlined how important it was for the security situation to improve in Baghdad.

''People need to feel as though the security situation is getting better and that they will be more secure if they want to stay there or people are to return,'' said McCormack.

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