Thousands fleeing Fallujah denied water and shelter

SOME 30,000 refugees fleeing Fallujah over the weekend have left Iraqi authorities struggling to accommodate them in camps around the city.

Hundreds of families, including young children, have spent the past few nights sleeping on the ground with no shelter in temperatures reaching 122F (50C).

The recent exodus adds to the 65 million people displaced by conflict worldwide, as revealed by the United Nations yesterday on World Refugee Day.

The figure, up from 59.5 million in 2014 and by 50 per cent in five years, means one in every 113 people is now a refugee, asylum seeker or internally displaced in their home country, according to the UN.

It measured the Earth’s population at 7.349 billion.

Recent offensives to retake Isil territory in Iraq have seen nearly two million civilians flee in the past few months.

More than 82,000 of them have escaped Fallujah, 30 miles west of Baghdad, in the four weeks since the Iraqi army began its campaign.

The Norwegian Refugee Council described scenes at the Amriyat al-Fallujah camp as a humanitarian disaster with water rations drying up fast.

“The conditions are miserable, the scenes apocalyptic,” said Jan Egeland, of the NRC. “They fled the nightmare of Fallujah. Now they wait for tents, sleep in warehouses or out in the open. Iraq’s civilians deserve better.”

Azeez Abdullah, with his wife and five children, said: “We left our homes, belongings and cars, wearing only the clothes we had on. Until now we’re sleeping on the ground, in the dust. There are no tents, no mattresses, no toilets. I wanted to get water for drinking, but I couldn’t find any.”