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Iraq wants global aid to cope with displacement crisis

Xinhua, November 11, 2015 Adjust font size:

Iraq on Wednesday urged the international community to help it meet the needs of millions of people who were displaced due to military operations in their cities and towns which have been captured by Islamic State (IS) militants.

"Iraq, under decline of oil prices and formidable deficit in its budget, has no ability to contain the displacement crisis," Jasim Mohammed al-Jaff, minister of immigration and displaced, said at a joint press conference with Raad al-Dahlaki, head of the immigration and displaced parliamentary committee.

"Iraq cannot bear the burden of millions of displaced people alone, and we are looking forward to the international community to offer help," Jaff said.

The immigration ministry suffers from great shortage in its budget after the government halved its originally allocation from two trillion Iraqi Dinar (about 1.66 billion U.S. dollars) to one trillion Iraqi Dinar (about 830 million dollars), Jaff said, adding that the ministry received only some 60 percent of the reduced amount.

He said the displaced people are in dire need for tents and caravans, food, water and health care. "Such life-saving assistance is essential for those people.

The minister's comments came as the severe weather conditions further compounds the situations of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi displaced people, while torrential rain during the past two weeks resulted in floods in many camps in central and northern Iraq.

For his part, Dahlaki said that the number of displaced people is increasing to 3.5 million people, most of them need assistance.

He said that there is a need for more cooperation from other ministries and urged the authorities to increase the allocation for the displaced people in the coming 2016 budget.

Iraq has been witnessing some of the worse violence in years, as the surge of violence between armed groups, including the Islamic State (IS) group, and government forces has resulted in a dramatically increase in the number of displaced people across the country.

However, the recent report by the UN Office for Coordination and Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said that the violence has resulted in an estimated 3.2 million internally displaced people. Enditem