Iraq: New Humanitarian Crisis Looms as More Than Three Million Iraqis

Amnesty International

Amnesty International today warned that the Middle East is on the verge of a new humanitarian crisis unless the European Union, US and other states take urgent and concrete measures to assist the more than three million people forcibly displaced by the conflict in Iraq. In a briefing released in advance of an international conference being convened by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Geneva, 17-18 April 2007, the organization called for other states to immediately help alleviate the situation of Iraqi refugees who have increasingly flooded into Syria and Jordan, particularly since the February 2006 attack by armed insurgents on one of Iraq's holiest shrines, the Samarra' mosque. That attack sparked a new, more intensive bout of sectarian bloodletting in which civilians from across Iraq's increasingly divided communities have been among the principal targets...

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