Car bombs kill 21 in Iraq; EU warns of donor fatigue

IS claims attack to avenge Anbar

BAGHDAD, May 1, (Agencies): The head of the European Union’s humanitarian aid department warned on Thursday that the situation in Iraq is deteriorating rapidly while the world is preoccupied with crises elsewhere.

Shortly after Jean-Louis de Brouwer sounded the stark warning, a wave of car bombs targeting public places after nightfall in Baghdad and in a town just south of the Iraqi capital killed a total of 21 people and wounded scores of others.

Earlier in the day, De Brouwer told The Associated Press that the number of displaced people in Iraq has quadrupled in the last year and shows no signs of decreasing.

“The worst is still to come,” he said. “The situation is deteriorating, humanitarian aid is becoming even more essential than it was, the problem is funding.”

Iraq is convulsed in a battle between the government, its militia allies and forces of the Islamic State group that have taken over large parts of the north and west in the country.

The fighting has displaced some 2.7 million people inside the country, including 110,000 who fled from renewed fighting in and around the city of Ramadi in the west- ern Anbar province in the past two weeks.

Many of these are living with other families, inside mosques or in makeshift camps around the western periphery of Baghdad. Meanwhile, there are hundreds of thousands more in the Kurdish northern regions.

“This is quite a matter for concern as the needs are skyrocketing and the resources are not increasing,” said de Brouwer. “I’m afraid there is also — not donor fatigue — but donor exhaustion.”

An even larger refugee problem in neighboring Syria and most recently and earthquake in Nepal has drawn attention away from the slow building crisis in Iraq, he said.

In June, the EU is to co-host with the UN a new call for humanitarian aid for Iraq in Brussels. The EU has nearly doubled its allocation for Iraq from $22 million in 2014 to $43 million this year.

De Brouwer also criticized the practice of not allowing those displaced from Sunni areas into Baghdad or the Kurdish region without sponsorship, leaving most people stranded. The Islamic State jihadist group said Friday it carried out a series of deadly car bombings in Shiite districts of Iraq’s capital to avenge attacks on displaced persons from a Sunni province.

Eleven people were killed and more than 40 wounded in a wave of car bomb attacks on Thursday, medics said.

The interior ministry reported three bombings, although IS said in a statement it carried out six attacks “to avenge residents of Anbar killed in the streets of Baghdad” by Shiites.