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UN agencies offer shelter, food to displaced Iraqis

Xinhua, March 7, 2015 Adjust font size:

The United Nations said Friday that UN agencies are providing shelter, food to displaced people in Iraq as small numbers of people continue to arrive in Samarra city in Iraq's northern central province of Salahudin.

"Displaced families are living in 127 collective shelters, including schools where many families are sharing classrooms," UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said here at a daily news briefing, quoting the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) and aid organizations. "Displaced people are also sheltering in unfinished and abandoned buildings, and mosques in and around the city."

The Iraqi government has provided one thousand tents which are now being erected in Samara, 120 kilometers north of the Iraqi capital of Baghdad, he said, adding that the UN refugee agency will provide another 1,500 tents.

Meanwhile, he said, the World Food Programme (WFP) has enough food pre-positioned in its warehouse in Baghdad to feed 75,000 people for three days. And the UN agency will work with local partners on the ground in the coming weeks to distribute monthly food rations, security permitting.

Large parts of the Salahudin province have been under the control of the Islamic State extremists since June 11, a day after bloody clashes broke out between Iraqi security forces and the group which had controlled the country's northern city of Mosul and later seized swathes of territories in Nineveh, another northern city, and other predominantly Sunni provinces.

Late last year, Iraq's firebrand Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr ordered his followers to prepare for jihad, or holy war, against the Islamic State militants to protect the holy shrines in Samarra as the Islamic State pushed forward in northern and central parts of the country.

The predominantly Sunni city of Samarra is home to the provincial operations command of Salahudin and the Shiite shrine of Imam Ali al-Hadi. The shrine contains the tombs of Ali al-Hadi and his son Hassan al-Askari, the 10th and 11th of the Shiites' 12 most revered Imams. Endite