RIYADH, 29 October 2003 — About 384 Iraqi refugees are on their way home after leaving a camp in northern Saudi Arabia where they lived for the past 12 years, a senior camp official said yesterday.
This is the seventh “voluntary repatriation convoy” from Rafha camp since US-led forces ousted President Saddam Hussein’s regime in April, Brig. Gen. Khalid ibn Fahd Al-Wasseifer told The Associated Press.
Last week, a group of 650 people left the camp to return home. Al-Wasseifer said the refugees would pass through Kuwait on their way to their hometowns in Iraq.
There are now about 3,600 Iraqis remaining in Rafha. Owing to the lack of security in Iraq, the United Nations is not encouraging Iraqi refugees to return home, but it is assisting those who want to.
Rafha camp was established after the 1991 US-led Gulf War that drove Iraqi forces out of Kuwait. It houses mostly Iraqi Army deserters and soldiers taken prisoner during that war. Rafha was originally home to about 33,000 Iraqis, but about 25,000 have resettled in America, Europe and Australia.
Another 3,500 returned to Iraq before Saddam’s ouster.
