Refugees leaving war-besieged Iraq
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Sudanese youths play by the tents of a refugee camp near the Jordanian town of Al- Ruweishid, some 50 kilometers from the Jordanian-Iraqi border.
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CNN's Jane Arraf goes into the northern Iraq mountains with Kurdish refugees (March 23)
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AMMAN, Jordan (AP) -- Fourteen Iraqis, the first handful of official refugees from that war-besieged land, crossed the Syrian border on Sunday northwest of Mosul, a northern Iraqi city under U.S. bombardment, the U.N. refugee agency reported.
The group, crossing at Al Yarubiyah, Syria, was transferred to the U.N. refugee agency's camp at El Hol, 100 kilometers (60 miles) to the west, agency spokesman Peter Kessler said in Amman.
An expected exodus of refugees from Iraq has not yet materialized in the four-day-old war. In the north, particularly, thousands have left embattled cities, but they're not crossing international borders, Kessler said.
"People seem to be sticking close to their communities of origin," he said.
Hundreds of people from third countries fleeing the fighting, particularly Sudanese, Egyptians and Moroccans, have arrived at the Jordanian border, U.N. officials say. But no Iraqis have sought international relief help except at the Syrian border.
"This was the first confirmed report of Iraqi refugee arrivals," Kessler said.
Tens of thousands of apparently better-off Iraqis are reported to have crossed into Syria in recent weeks but have not sought assistance.
They instead moved in with friends or are renting homes for the duration of the war, reports say. (
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