NYT: Baghdad Camp Houses Those Fleeing Falluja

[DeepModem Mom]

REFUGEES
Baghdad Camp Houses Those Fleeing Falluja
By CHRISTINE HAUSER

Published: April 26, 2004


BAGHDAD, Iraq, April 25 — The prospect of a long, deadly conflict is re-sculpturing the urban landscape of a Baghdad neighborhood.

Rising in a sandy lot between a school, a few houses, palm trees and a congested, two-lane road edged with shops are the peaks of tents, the beginning of a camp to shelter hundreds of Iraqis who fled fighting in the town of Falluja.

"Children usually played soccer here," said an Iraq Red Crescent volunteer, Hussein Abbas, overseeing workers arranging the white canvas tents in the Khudra neighborhood in western Baghdad. "Now we cannot raise the tents quickly enough. There are more and more families coming."

Hundreds of Iraqis who fled fierce fighting between insurgents and American marines have trickled into Baghdad and nearby villages over the past few weeks, moving into the houses of relatives, sleeping in schools or curling up in their cars on the side of the road.

They are also settling into this camp of about 50 tents, a number Red Crescent officials said they were preparing to double, especially if there was a resurgence of fighting....


http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/26/international/middleeast/26CAMP.html