News, August 2003, www.aljazeerah.info
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Refugees to leave Saudi Arabia for Iraq Tomorrow
Arab News, Reuters
GENEVA, 30 August 2003 — A convoy of 296 Iraqi refugees, stuck in a temporary camp in eastern Saudi Arabia since the Baghdad bomb 10 days ago, is due to arrive in southern Iraq tomorrow, the United Nations refugee agency said yesterday.
The group was the third to leave the Rafha camp which still shelters more than 4,400 Iraqi refugees, the last of about 33,000 who fled into Saudi Arabia in the final days of the 1991 Gulf War.
From Rafha they were taken to the temporary camp. A spokesman for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said no date had been set yet for any further convoys, although the agency announced on Aug. 19 that it planned to step up Iraqi returns if it was safe enough.
Later that day a blast ripped through the UN’s headquarters, killing 23 staff including the UN special envoy to Iraq, Sergio Vieira de Mello.
The attack prompted UNHCR to halve the number of workers in Iraq. It now has 26 international staff - half in the north and the rest in Baghdad and Basra.
Buses and trucks carrying the 296 will leave the Ar Raq’i pilgrim center, 400 kilometers east of Rafha, early tomorrow morning and cross Kuwait before arriving in the port of Umm Qasr later the same day for arrival formalities.
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| Earth, a planet hungry for peace |
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| The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers (Ran Cohen, pmc, 5/24/03). |
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| The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers in the West Bank (Ran Cohen, pmc, 5/24/03). |
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