RIYADH, 19 October 2003 — More than 650 Iraqi refugees who have spent 12 years in a refugee camp in northern Saudi Arabia will head home tomorrow, Brig. Gen. Khalid ibn Fahd Al-Wasseifer, who runs the camp, announced yesterday.
The refugees are mostly Iraqi Army war deserters and soldiers taken prisoner during the 1991 Gulf War.
Al-Wasseifer said the Iraqis will leave the Rafha refugee camp in a convoy of 26 buses and trucks for Kuwait, where authorities will take charge of the refugees before handing them to British forces who control southern Iraq.
The Rafha camp was established after the US-led war that drove occupying Iraqi forces from Kuwait. It originally housed some 33,000 Iraqis, but about 25,000 have been rehabilitated in America, Europe and Australia.
Another 3,500 returned to Iraq before Saddam Hussein’s ouster by US-led forces.
Al-Wasseifer said the Kingdom was trying to help the camp’s remaining 4,000 residents who want to return to Iraq.
Several groups of Iraqis have returned home since Saddam’s regime was ousted six months ago, including 450 people last month.
