Over 85,000 Iraqis displaced since mid-May: UN

The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reported that, since May 15, more than 85,000 internally displaced persons (IDPs) have fled Ramadi District, UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric told reporters here Thursday.

"More than 180,000 families have been displaced from Ramadi District since 8 April," Dujarric said at a daily news briefing here. "Conditions in locations where IDPs are concentrated are cause for concern." Ramadi is the provincial capital of Iraq's Anbar province.

At an IDP site in Abu Ghraib District in the Baghdad Governorate, sanitation facilities are inadequate and a high incidence of diarrhoea is affecting children under five years, according to a humanitarian assessment conducted earlier this week.

"The UN and its partners continue to provide shelter, water and sanitation, and food assistance in all areas where displaced people are concentrating," he said.

Iraqi forces took up positions around Ramadi on Wednesday, seizing two districts after clashes with jihadists, as the explicitly sectarian name Shiite militias gave the operation caused unease.

The Islamic State (IS) also came under pressure in neighboring Syria, where Kurdish fighters expelled the jihadists from more than a dozen Christian villages in the northeast.

Iraqi forces fought IS militants on the southern outskirts of Ramadi, which the jihadists seized on May 17. Endite