BAGHDAD
Five percent of internally displaced Sunni families in Iraq have returned home after government forces took over their Sunni-majority areas from Daesh, a parliamentarian said on Saturday.
Wahda al-Jamili, adviser of Iraqi Parliament’s Speaker Salim al-Jabour, said the “low numbers of people returning home is caused by the conditions imposed upon them by some entities that attribute themselves to al-Hashd al-Shaabi and the armed forces.”
Al-Jamili said the low rate of return “undermines the national reconciliation project.”
Only five percent of displaced people returned to their homes in Diyala and Saladin provinces as well as the Jurf al-Sakhar area in southern Iraq, according to al-Jamili, who urged the Iraqi government to provide a secure return to the displaced people.
The number of internally displaced Iraqis has reached four million, UNHCR said in a statement in June.
Although Daesh recently lost several areas in Diyala, Ninawah and Saladin provinces, it remains in firm control of most of Anbar, including Ramadi, the provincial capital.
