Middle East News
Germany to host 2,500 Iraqi refugees from Jordan, Syria
Mar 10, 2009, 14:37 GMT
Amman - The German government has accepted resettlement of 2,500 Iraqi refugees on German soil, 500 of them residing in Jordan, the Amman office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said Tuesday.
'Germany has agreed to host 2,500 Iraqis - 2,000 from Syria and 500 from Jordan,' Dana Bajjali, a spokeswoman for the UNHCR office in Amman told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa.
The first batch, comprising 17 families with 65 people will be leaving Jordan 'soon' for resettlement in Germany, Bajjali said without giving an exact date for their departure.
However, she said that one of the families would be leaving earlier than others as a special case due to their need for 'emergency medical treatment'.
About 2.2 million Iraqis fled their homes for safety after the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq which sparked an internal fighting particularly between Sunnis and the Iran-backed Shiites.
According to the UNHCR, about 1.5 million Iraqis reportedly settled in Syria while the Norwegian institute, Fafo, which conducted a study in Jordan on behalf of the UNHCR two years ago, estimated the number of Iraqis who fled to Jordan at between 450,000 and 500,000.
Over the past six years, the UNHCR has arranged the resettlement of thousands of Iraqis in 16 countries throughout the world including Germany, Bajjali said.
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