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Iraqi vice president sez 100,000 have fled
A new estimate by one of Iraq's vice presidents has put the number of people who have fled their homes at 100,000, exceeding recent projections by other Iraqi officials and further clouding the debate over how deeply sectarian conflicts are affecting the nation.The latest estimate was made by Adel Abdul Mahdi, a Shiite leader selected as one of two vice presidents, but it was not clear where he had gotten his information. On Friday he had suggested the number was 100,000 families, but today corrected it to say that 100,000 people were living as refugees. In an interview last week, the Iraqi national security adviser, Mowaffak al-Rubaie, said 13,750 families had been displaced, which could mean about 70,000 to 80,000 people. The conflicting numbers speak to the difficulty in estimating how many people are fleeing the violence, when most are believed to be finding shelter with relatives or friends. And both estimates contrast with statements by American military leaders, who have said there is no "widespread movement" of Iraqis fleeing from sectarian fighting. Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch, a senior American military spokesman in Baghdad, says reports of a huge number of displaced persons and refugees appear to be overblown. "We see reports of tens of thousands of families displaced here in Iraq, and we chase down each and every one of those reports," he said Thursday. "But we have seen some displacement, pockets of families moving, but not in large numbers." "Some of them truly are moving because they're concerned about their own personal security or their family's security, I'm sure of that," General Lynch said. "Some of them are moving for economic reasons. Some of them are moving to be with their families. But we're not seeing internally displaced persons at the rate which causes us alarm." But Iraqi officials say that people who live in areas where they are part of an ethnic or religious minority face continual threats, including in places far from Baghdad. Sheik Omar al-Jibouri, a human rights officer with the Iraqi Islamic Party, a large Sunni Arab group, said that in Zubayr, a suburb of Basra, Sunnis are being increasingly warned to leave. At least 60 Sunnis were killed there in the past month, he said. "Leaflets fill the streets saying, 'Leave this district, Wahhabis!' " Mr. Jibouri said Saturday. "Neither students nor officials can work" if they are Sunnis, because of the threats, he said. In Baghdad, 10 bodies were discovered Saturday in three neighborhoods, all shot in the head with signs of torture, an Interior Ministry official said. The United States military reported that an American soldier was killed about 4 p.m. Saturday by a roadside bomb southwest of Baghdad. And the Marines reported that a car bomb in Qaim, in western Iraq, had killed three civilians. Agence France-Presse reported that at least six Iraqi security force members were killed Saturday. By itself, the terrorist group Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia says it has carried out 800 suicide attacks in Iraq in the past three years, not including attacks by "other mujahedeen," according to Ayman al-Zawahiri, the No. 2 Qaeda leader, who made the statement in a video posted on the Internet on Saturday. "This is what has broken the back of America in Iraq," Mr. Zawahiri said, according to a translation by the SITE Institute, which tracks violent insurgent groups. "America, Britain and their allies have achieved nothing but losses, disasters and misfortunes." Posted by: Dan Darling 2006-05-01 |
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