Refugee repatriations from Iran suspended due to attack on UN

Moves to repatriate Iraqi refugees from Iran have been suspended following Tuesday's devastating bomb blast at UN headquarters in the Iraqi capital, Baghdad, killing at least 20 and wounding scores of others. "The starting date was expected sometime in August, but has now been put off," Peter Kessler, a spokesman for the Office of the High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), told IRIN from Geneva on Thursday. According to UNHCR, there are some 4 million Iraqi expatriates, including about a million asylum seekers, refugees and other Iraqis under UNHCR protection in neighbouring countries. Of this latter category, more than 200,000 are living in Iran, which shares a 1,458-km border with Iraq. About 48,000 of the Iraqis in Iran live in some 22 refugee camps, primarily along the country's western frontier, with the rest hosted by various communities elsewhere. UNHCR had hoped to begin facilitating voluntary returns in groups of 100, with the first pilot convoy tentatively having been set to cross into the southern Iraqi city of Basra next week via the Shalamcheh border-crossing point. That convoy was to have set out from the Ashrafi refugee camp in Khuzestan Province, 150 km north of Ahvaz, where some 11,000 refugees live. Kessler said UNHCR wanted to resume the convoys soon, complemented by a presence at the border. "We don't want people to be in danger, as the border is heavily mined," he said. As part of its overall effort, the refugee agency has already dispatched 48 truckloads of assistance to Basra and Baghdad, including plastic sheeting, blankets, kitchen sets, and other non-food related items. UNHCR has already facilitated two convoys of returnees from Saudi Arabia, with the second convoy arriving on the 16 August, and a third due to have left on Tuesday night. "This, of course, had to be postponed due to the security precautions enacted following the bombing in Baghdad," Kessler said. "We don't have a date set to restart normal operations in southern Iraq." Likewise, he noted, at some point, UNHCR planned to begin convoys from Iran, but stressed that no date had been set. Commenting on the situation, Marie-Helen Verney, a UNHCR spokeswoman, told IRIN from the Iranian capital, Tehran, it was impossible to know what the next steps would be, as the agency was still awaiting clarification on a number of issues, including staffing and security arrangements inside Iraq. "We obviously hope that the security situation will improve rapidly, so that our operations can start again," she said.