Around 46,000 Iraqis who had fled abroad to escape brutal violence returned last month on the back of improving security in the war-ravaged country, a top military officer said on Wednesday. Brigadier General Qassim Ata, spokesman for the Baghdad security plan, told reporters that "46,030 Iraqis crossed the border and returned in October following the improvement in security."
US and Iraqi officials maintain that the level of violence has dropped in the past few months across Iraq, especially in Baghdad where a massive military crackdown aims to rein in the daily bloodshed. Thousands of people have been killed in Baghdad in the past 20 months after brutal Shia-Sunni sectarian warfare broke out.
Ata reiterated the claims again on Wednesday, saying that "most of the neighbourhoods of Baghdad are seeing a drop in violence." His claim that Iraqis were returning comes just two days after the Iraqi Red Crescent said in a report that local residents continued to flee their homes in large numbers in September.
The report said during the month of September 368,479 Iraqis left their homes to escape sectarian violence, taking the total number of internally displaced people since the US-led invasion in 2003 to almost 2.3 million. According to the United Nations, another 2.4 million Iraqis have fled outside the country, mostly to Syria and Jordan.
The exodus of Iraqis from their homes is the largest population movement in the Middle East since Palestinians fled the newly-declared state of Israel in 1948.
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