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Nearly
3,000 Iranian Kurds in a camp in central Iraq, cut
off for the past two weeks from outside help because
of fighting in the region, are facing bleak
conditions with no water or electricity although
food has reached them, the United Nations refugee
agency said today.
In the latest of several alerts over conditions in
the Al Tash camp near Ramadi, an area where there
has been fighting between United States-led forces
and insurgents, the UN High Commissioner for
Refugees (UNHCR) said the health centre and police
post had not been working for the past 10 days.
But on Monday, three people from the Iraqi Ministry
of Displacement and Migration managed to get into
the camp told UNHCR that most of the remaining
refugees there wanted to leave because they felt
unsafe.
Until earlier this month, Al Tash was home to some
4,200 Iranian Kurd refugees, but about a third fled
when fighting flared up in the area, which is about
50 kilometres away from Fallujah, scene of a major
United States-led attack.
Because of the difficult security conditions in the
area UNHCR’s partners there have not been able to
enter the camp but food has reached it through the
public distribution system, which targets both Iraqi
and refugee populations.
Meanwhile the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has
launched a multi-million dollar project to ensure
that all Iraqi children receive basic educational
supplies. It has begun distributing more than 6
million school bags and education kits to children
throughout the country.
The $40 million-project has received support from
the Governments of Japan, Canada, Denmark and
Luxembourg; the European Commission; the Spanish
National Committee for UNICEF; and the United States
Agency for International Development (USAID).
The kits have appropriate learning materials for
children in grades one through four and grades five
through nine. Each child will get a school bag,
notebooks, pencils, erasers, sharpeners, crayons or
geometric sets and a drawing book.
Because of security concerns, UNICEF is sending the
bags and the kits directly to the separate eighteen
Iraqi governorates and they are being distributed
under the auspices of the Iraqi Ministry of
Education.
UNHCR
http://www.unhcr.org/
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