PHOTOS: Fire burns 14 shelters in Kirkuk IDP camp
ERBIL, Kurdistan Region (Kurdistan24) – A fire erupted in an internally displaced persons (IDPs) camp on Monday near the town of Leylan in Kirkuk Province, southern Kurdistan Region.
The Director of Migration and Displaced Department in Kirkuk Ammar Sabah told reporters that the fire erupted due to an electrical problem.
He added some IDPs had been wounded but there were no deaths, and firefighters arrived in the area to extinguish the fire.
Sabah mentioned 14 shelters belonging to 45 families had been burnt. He added the families would receive new accommodations immediately.
Most of the IDPs in the camp are ethnically Turkmen who fled from the Islamic State (IS) in the town of Talafaar, west of Mosul, and had settled in 1,800 shelters inside the camp.
So far, the cause of the fire is unknown.
Kirkuk is home to half-a-million IDPs while people in the territories under the control of the jihadist group continue to escape to the Kurdish-held areas in the west of Kirkuk.
The UNHCR recently reported that IS had captured around 3,000 IDPs in western Kirkuk to use as civilian shields against the Iraqi security forces.
Security sources told Kurdistan24 that the insurgents killed 12 of the IDPs to intimidate the rest who were fleeing from the city to Kirkuk.
The Kurdistan Region is home to around 1.8 million refugees and IDPs who mostly fled from other parts of Iraq due to the threat of IS.
Moreover, Kurdistan shares over 1,000 kilometers of its border with IS.
As such, the Region expects to receive over half-a-million more IDPs once the Iraqi forces initiate the Mosul offensive.
IS took control of Mosul in June 2014 and expanded to other provinces of Iraq including Nineveh, Diyala, Salahaddin, and Anbar.
Kurdish Peshmerga and Iraqi security have so far liberated large swaths of territory from the group.
According to Iraq’s Prime Minister and Defense Minister, 2016 will be the end of IS in the country.
Editing by Karzan Sulaivany
(Additional reporting by Soran Kamaran from Kirkuk)
