U.N.: No 'substantial' refugee traffic into Turkey, Iran
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A Sudanese family sits in a tent at a refugee camp in Jordan on Tuesday, set up for third-country nationals who fled Iraq.
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GENEVA, Switzerland (CNN) -- The United Nations' refugee agency is bracing for a stream of refugees fleeing the war in Iraq, but its spokesman Tuesday said the agency had seen "no substantial movements" across Iraq's borders into Turkey and Iran.
Also, International Committee of the Red Cross teams based in Iran are monitoring the southern Iraqi town of Basra, where the threat of a humanitarian aid crisis is growing.
The office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has reports of groups of Iraqis moving along the Iraq border with Iran, and the International Red Cross is monitoring movements inside Iraq, U.N. spokesman Kris Janowski told reporters.
Janowski said latest reports show that "more than 22,000 Iraqis have moved to the Iraqi town of Nowsud, close to the Iranian border province of Kurdistan" in recent days.
However, "our office in Iran reports this morning that there have been no arrivals of Iraqi refugees into Iran so far, although there have been reports of pockets of Iraqis who had moved along the Iraqi side of the border with Iran as a precaution. They are mainly people from northern Iraq."
The International Committee of the Red Cross told the U.N. refugee agency "more than 100 third-country nationals, or immigrants in Iraq, [are] on the Iraqi side of the Iraq-Iran crossing at Khosravi in Kermanshah province. They are reportedly awaiting permission from the Iraqi authorities to cross the border into Iran."
The U.N. agency is preparing refugee camp sites in Iran and is receiving relief items from warehouses in western Iran.
"Over the weekend, the Iranian government received four planeloads of relief supplies" from a Russian relief agency, Janowski said. Iran's government has turned over the Russian donation to the Iranian Red Crescent Society for the relief effort.
Those supplies include tents, stoves, water filters, blankets, dried food, generators, flour, soap, canned milk, salt and tools.
In Turkey, Janowski said, teams in the southern part of the country are monitoring the border with Iraq stretching up to the Iranian border.
"Despite reports of population displacement in the north of Iraq, Iraqis have so far not approached the frontier with Turkey -- people seem to be sticking close to their communities," Janowski said.
At a warehouse in the Turkish town of Iskenderun, one of three main regional UNHCR stockpiles, the relief supply stock "has more than 60,000 blankets, 9,000 tents, 18,000 kitchen sets, 44,000 jerry cans, 58,000 mattresses, 15,000 stoves, 10,300 plastic rolls, 17,000 lanterns and 11 pre-fabricated warehouses. These supplies can be shifted into Syria or elsewhere if needed," Janowski said.
