KUWAIT CITY, 24 May 2004 — The return home of the last batch of Iraqi refugees from a camp in Saudi Arabia has been “suspended indefinitely” because of security concerns in the war-torn country, the United Nations refugee agency said yesterday.
“They were supposed to leave earlier, but due to the deteriorating security situation in Iraq, their repatriation had been held up,” Mamoon Muhsen, UNHCR external affairs officer in the Gulf, said in Kuwait.
Some 4,750 refugees who had been staying in Rafha camp near the Saudi-Iraqi border for the last 12 years, had been repatriated in 15 groups between July last year and January, and the last group of 483 were supposed to leave in March.
The remaining refugees include women, children and men and will be allowed to return home once the situation improves, Muhsen said.
Most had fled their homes in the aftermath of a Shiite uprising in southern Iraq following the 1991 Gulf War, which was brutally suppressed by Saddam Hussein’s forces.
