BAGHDAD: Hundreds of displaced Iraqis, mostly women and children, were transferred from a northern camp to their home areas Wednesday despite humanitarian concerns over what awaits them on their return.
The civilians originally hailed from Hawija but had fled fighting against the Daesh group years ago to Hammam Al-Alil camp, about 150 kilometers north.
Early Wednesday, Iraqi officials and security forces began guiding camp residents to more than a dozen white buses bearing the emblem of Iraq’s ministy of transport.
Women in black robes and young children carried their meagre belongings and queued outside the buses, some of them crying, as officials checked their names against a list of those expected to leave.
“We are being returned to our areas. Maybe I’ll have to live in a camp there because my house is destroyed,” said Umm Hikm, a 65-year-old displaced woman who had been living in the camp for two years.
More than 150 families, or around 550 individuals, would be taken back to Kirkuk province as part of the transfer, said Ali Khodr, the associate governor for displacement.
“A few days ago, 35 families were returned to (the western province of) Anbar. We are working on returning the rest of the displaced to their provinces of origin,” he told AFP.
More than 1.6 million people remain displaced in camps, unfinished structures or rented apartments across Iraq nearly two years after the country declared Daesh defeated.
The government has stressed its policy is for all displaced to return home, but many of their areas of origin remain heavily destroyed, with few services.
After several hours in Iraq’s baking sun, the buses left for Hawija, according to the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) which manages Hammam Al-Alil and was monitoring the transfers.
NRC’s Iraq media coordinator Tom Peyre-Costa said the group was very concerned about the process, as the displaced often had no homes to return to and feared retaliation from their communities for perceived ties to Daesh.
“They are scared, and most families from Hawija leaving today are undocumented,” he said, speaking to AFP in Baghdad from the camp.
“Going home without documents means they will not have access to anything — children won’t be able to go to school, no access to health care, no food distribution.”
Hundreds of displaced Iraqis transferred from camp
Hundreds of displaced Iraqis transferred from camp
- The civilians fled from Hawija town to escape Daesh
- Over 150 families will be transferred back to Kirkuk
Palestinian NGO condemns Israeli act of ‘revenge’ after prisoner abuse video
- A Palestinian NGO has denounced what it called an Israeli act of revenge after a video showed far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir overseeing the abuse of detainees in a military prison
RAMALLAH: A Palestinian NGO has denounced what it called an Israeli act of revenge after a video showed far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir overseeing the abuse of detainees in a military prison.
Just days before the start of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, Ben Gvir held a tour of Ofer Prison in the occupied West Bank, Israel’s Channel 7 reported.
In footage filmed on Friday and broadcast by the channel, around 20 police officers are seen storming a hallway leading to prison cells, brandishing their weapons and firing stun grenades.
They then pull five detainees from their cells, their hands tied behind their backs, forcing them face-down onto the floor.
The operation took place as a bill proposing the death penalty for Palestinian prisoners convicted of terrorism awaited a final vote in the Israeli parliament.
“This is all part of ongoing displays meant to take revenge on Palestinian detainees,” Abdallah al?Zaghari, head of the Palestinian Prisoners’ Club, told AFP on Saturday.
“Everything Ben Gvir and the far?right government are doing affects not only the Palestinian people and prisoners in detention camps — it also impacts the global legal and human rights system,” he added.
Ben Gvir, known for his inflammatory rhetoric, is considered one of the most hard-line members of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s ruling coalition.
“It is simply a source of pride — arriving at a prison like this, a prison for terrorists, the vilest of the vile, seeing them like this,” Ben Gvir said in the video.
“I want one more thing: to execute them — the death penalty for terrorists,” he added.
Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas on Saturday said the remarks were “a new war crime and a blatant challenge to international humanitarian law regarding prisoners.”
International rights groups have repeatedly warned of alleged abuse and mistreatment inflicted in Israeli prisons since Hamas’s October 7, 2023, attack on Israel.
While the death penalty exists for a small number of crimes in Israel, it has become a de facto abolitionist country, with the Nazi Holocaust perpetrator Adolf Eichmann the last person to be executed in 1962.
