Tuesday, November 14, 2006
Karbala overwhelmed with displaced families
Humanitarian
Iraq's Karbala province, 80 km south of the capital Baghdad, is overwhelmed with displaced families and can no longer host and provide services for an additional influx, a local official said on Monday. Ghalib al-Daami, a member of Karbala Provincial Council said that as of Saturday the council took the decision to stop hosting displaced families, other then those who could afford to rent houses or those who could take refuge with relatives.
The provincial office of the Iraqi Red Crescent Society (IRCS) said that 70 per cent of nearly 8,000 displaced families, about 50,000 individuals, are living in tents at the IRCS camp in the city's main park, in mosques as well as in abandoned government buildings. "About 30 percent have either ended up with their relatives or have rented houses," said Haitham Dhafir Hussein, director of the IRCS office in Karbala. "We don't have a problem in terms of providing assistance. We are in the process of distributing winter items to them, including four blankets [per refugee], pots, lanterns and detergents.”
The IRCS is meeting the needs of displaced families from Baghdad, Babil, Salaheddin, Anbar, Mosul and Diyala, Hussein said. Some 16,000 individuals are fleeing their homes on a weekly basis to different neighbourhoods of the capital, Baghdad, or to other governorates in the country according to Mowafaq Abdul-Raoof, the Iraqi Ministry of Displacement and Migration's spokesman.
