Facing attacks, Shi’ite Muslims flee to south

In the face of ongoing sectarian violence, hundreds of Shi’ite Muslim families have fled to the Shi’ite-dominated cities in the country’s south seeking shelter with relatives, according to local officials. "We managed to put up generators to ensure electricity for displaced families, and we’re still providing them with blankets, beds, foodstuffs and cooking stoves," said Ali Abbas, a representative of the Ministry of Displacement and Migration. Abbas added that, in Kut, some 160km south-east of Baghdad, 950 families have occupied a public amusement park after fleeing their homes in Baghdad, where they faced threats and intimidation from Sunni militants. "I lost about 30 of my cousins," said Fadhil Ali, 42, a Shi’ite who fled his home in the Abu Ghraib district of the capital along with seven family members. "We all know who are behind these killings, but government control in Abu Ghraib is completely absent." According to Sabah Saied, head of the local Red Crescent Association in Amara province, some 290km south-east of Baghdad, 380 Shi’ite families were currently seeking shelter in an abandoned factory there. "There’s no shortage at all, but we need to have at least one ambulance in case of emergency," Saied complained. Hamdan Abdullah, a 58-year old Shi'ite coffee shop owner, said that his family fled the Latifiya area, 30km south of Baghdad, after receiving leaflets reading: "Tell your Shi'ite government to provide you with houses far away from ours.” A spate of sectarian violence erupted in the wake of the 22 February bombing of a revered Shi’ite shrine in Samarra, some 120km north of the capital. Since then, hundreds of people have been killed and dozens of mosques damaged or destroyed as a result of reprisal attacks between the country's two major Muslim denominations.