Tens of thousands more Iraqis have fled their homes as sectarian violence looks ever more like civil war two months after a US-backed national unity government was formed, official data showed today.
Iraq's most powerful religious authority, Shia Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, joined the UN and US officials in raising the alarm that a spike in bloodshed and "campaigns of displacement" threaten Iraq's very future.
The US military admitted violence in Baghdad was little changed by a month-long clampdown and the city morgue said it had seen 1,000 bodies so far in July, a slight increase on June.
A day after the US issued a stern warning to both Shia and minority Sunni leaders to match talk with action on reining in and reconciling "death squads" and "terrorists" from their respective communities, the Migration Ministry said more than 30,000 people had registered as refugees this month alone.
"We consider this to be a dangerous sign," ministry spokesman Sattar Nowruz said, acknowledging that many more people fled abroad or quietly sought refuge with relatives rather than sign up for official aid or move into state camps.
The increase took to 27,000 families - some 162,000 people - the number who have registered for help with the ministry in the five months since the February 22nd bombing of a Shia shrine at Samarra sparked a new phase of communal bloodshed.
Among 11 new tented camps being set up by the ministry is one in the southern city of Diwaniya, where police said some 10,000 Shia refugees have arrived in recent weeks.
They include Abd Hammad al-Saeidi: "Gunmen told us to leave or they would kill us," said the farmer from the violent lands just south of Baghdad. His family of 11 now live in a tent.
At a Sunni mosque in Baghdad, Red Crescent officials said numbers taking refuge there rose sharply after suspected Shi'ite militiamen killed 40 in the Sunni district of Jihad on July 9th.