Thousands of refugees return to Iraq

More than 25,000 Iraqis who fled to Syria have returned, the Iraqi Red Crescent said today.

In a separate report today, a human rights group said Iraqis who sought refuge in Lebanon are being coerced into returning home.

The Red Crescent report, issued for the period beginning September 15 and ending on November 30, said most of the estimated 25,000 to 28,000 refugees made the trip home in September and October, and the numbers tapered off during November.

However, according to officials in Iraq and Syria, more than 46,000 refugees returned in October and claimed the flow has continued unabated.

Echoing concerns by US and UN officials that many would find their homes occupied by others, the Red Crescent report said many of those who came from Syria - instead of returning to their own towns - joined the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis displaced within their homeland.

The report said the overwhelming majority of the refugees - at least 19,000 - returned to Baghdad, which has seen a dramatic turnaround in recent months, due largely to the influx of American troops to the capital, the freeze in activities from the feared Mahdi Army Shiite militia, and the US push to enlist local Sunnis to help in the fight against al Qaida.

The Red Crescent said many of the Iraqis returned to three districts largely reclaimed from al Qaida in Iraq's control: Amariyah, Azamiyah and Dora.

But, the organisation warned, many of those who returned did so at least in part because their money ran out in Syria.

"The high cost of living and rented apartments and the limited employment opportunities contributed to lack of stability of Iraqi families and increased their passion to return to their country," said the report, which drew its findings from transportation companies, and government departments and ministries.

Eager to take credit for the decline in violence, Iraq's government is encouraging refugees to return from Syria, airing commercials on state television directed at the exiles, providing armoured convoys of buses from Syria and paying stipends to help with relocation costs.

Most of the refugees fled to neighbouring Syria, but some also made it to other countries, including Jordan and to Lebanon.

In Lebanon, according to a Human Rights Watch report released today. Iraqi refugees in Lebanon without valid visas are detained indefinitely unless they agree to return home, the rights group said.

"Iraqi refugees in Lebanon live in constant fear of arrest," Bill Frelick, refugee policy director for Human Rights Watch, said in a statement.