Sectarian violence has forced about 100,000 families across Iraq to flee their homes, a top Iraqi official said, as six more Iraqis were killed in scattered violence on Saturday.
Adil Abdul-Mahdi, one of the country's two vice presidents, told reporters in the southern city of Najaf that 90 percent of the displaced were Shiites like himself and the rest were Sunnis, the minority that held sway under former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.
Other estimates of the number of displaced families have been lower.
Dr. Salah Abdul-Razzaq, spokesman of the Shiite Endowment, a government body that runs Shiite religious institutions, put the number of displaced families at 13,750 nationwide, or about 90,000 people.
That includes 25,000 Iraqis who have fled their homes since the bombing of a Shiite mosque in Samarra on Feb. 22 triggered a wave of attacks on Sunni mosques and clerics.
Earlier this week, U.S. spokesman Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch told reporters that U.S. forces had found no "widespread movement" of Shiites and Sunnis away from religiously mixed areas, despite reports to the contrary by Iraqi officials.
My opening was a reference to Maj Gen Rick Lynch's response. Of course, the official opinion is there is no "widespread movement". How come everyone else is wrong? Always wrong? Why can't these people just shut up rather than lie for Bushco?
Now, what surprises me is how the Iraqis' can accept daily bloodshed and bombings. Even the high figure of 100,000 sounds astonishingly low. I'm no hero and I'd move my family out of there in a heartbeat. This's just another example of how I can't relate to Iraqi's in some aspects of their lives. I can understand the need to lead as normal lives as possible, but there comes a point where it just isn't worth it. I'd leave and return home when I thought we had a 50-50 chance of living through the next 24 hours.
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