Der er mangel på mad, vand og andre fornødenheder i en af Iraks nyoprettede flygtningelejre, der indtil for få uger siden var en bar mark. Et halvt hundrede kilometer længere væk har de islamistiske ISIS nu kontrol over området.
KHAZAIR, 25 June 2014 (IRIN): Heavily pregnant Sneen kneels at the entrance to her tent, trying to shade herself from the searing sun overhead and keep the dust out of her eyes.
The 23-year-old, who gave her first name, arrived at Khazair camp, next to the checkpoint of the same name on the border between central Iraq and the semi-autonomous northern Kurdistan region, on 14 June with her three children and mother Beduwa.
She fled fighting in Iraq’s second largest city, Mosul, in the middle of the night.
“It was night time and there was bombing. We don’t have a car so we were walking and there was fighting very near,” she said, explaining how her husband, a taxi driver, had been working in the capital Baghdad and was now stuck there due to the roads being blocked by militant checkpoints.
Little comfort
Khazair camp lies approximately 100km west of the Kurdish capital Erbil and 53km east of Mosul, recently overrun by militants from the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIS).
ISIS and other Sunni militants have been fighting the Shia-led government in Iraq for months, but in the past few weeks, this new militant advance has driven some 500,000 people from their homes, according to the UN, bringing the total number of displaced since January to 1.2 million.
Khazair, covering three hectares, is now home to an estimated 1,400 internally displaced persons (IDPs), though the numbers fluctuate daily. It is one of two transit camps currently in operation though several more are under construction. The rest of the displaced are living in urban areas.
The camp has provided Sneen and the other arrivals with shelter and safety, but there is little comfort to be found on what is a flat and exposed piece of land that just a few weeks ago was a wheat field.
Only a few metres from the checkpoint, the site is dry and bare and women wrap scarves around their faces to protect themselves from the fierce heat and the swirling dust.
“It is so hot here,” Sneen said. “My oldest child can’t sleep. She keeps waking up and crying. She needs some cold water and a shower. It is so hot.”
Sparse conditions
Apart from rows of blue-and-white branded UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) tents and some latrines, there is little else at Khazair.
It is not hard to see why so few families have stopped here and why most have continued on towards urban areas.
Modher Alhamadani, who coordinates emergency response and migration health for the International Organization for Migration (IOM), said the poor conditions were linked to plans to relocate the camp.
“The government is planning to move the families to [a] more permanent camp and this is why the government and other agencies are unable to invest in this location,” he said.
“This means the IDPs are in a terrible situation… There is no electricity or enough water for them.”
He said the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) was distributing drinking water but it was not enough for daily use, and sanitation was poor:
“If you stand there for 10 minutes you can smell the bad odour.”
Food shortages
During IRIN’s visit to Khazair, Kurdish staff from a local restaurant arrived to hand out food from the back of a pickup truck.
Sneen’s mother, Beduwa, like many others was in the queue but arrived too late.
“Now we have nothing to eat,” she said, visibly upset as she walked back to her tent empty-handed.
Nearby, Zaid, 35, from Mosul, also complained about the lack of food.
“We share what food we have,” he said. “So far no organizations have brought food, only families and local businesses. We’re very hungry and there is not enough to eat.”
Uma Thapa, deputy country director for the World Food Programme (WFP) in Iraq, told IRIN that food deliveries began at the transit camps on 15 June.
“We are looking at the needs. We are on the move and we are providing food,” she said.
“Because it is a transit camp and people are coming and going, perhaps people who just arrived didn’t receive food this time, but we are there to provide everyone who is there with food.”
Relocation
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