Are ISIS fighters sending their families to refugee camps?

That is what a representative of the Kurdistan Regional Government told a gathering of the Human Rights Commission in Spain yesterday.

 

DOMIZ, IRAQ: The UNHCR Domiz refugee camp in the Kurdish region of northern Iraq. Housing ISIS families? Photo: http://metrography.photoshelter.com/image/I0000jQQVDZ2Uxko

From Rudaw:

BARCELONA, Spain – Refugees from the war in Syria and Iraq include family members of Islamic State (ISIS) fighters, leading to security concerns among authorities, the Kurdistan Region’s representative in Spain said.

“Some of the refugees are families of members of the Islamic State,” said Daban Shadala, the Kurdistan Regional Government’s (KRG) representative.

“They are sending their families (to the refugee camps) while they continue to fight us,” he said this week in a briefing to the Human Rights Commission of the Basque parliament in the city of Vitoria.

Shadala, whose comments in English were translated through an interpreter, was quoted as saying that weapons had been found in some of the houses where refugees were placed. He did not elaborate.

He said that, according to the last count, there were some 1.8 million refugees from Iraq and Syria in the Kurdistan Region in northern Iraq, and warned that another 500,000 refugees were still expected.

Shadala made an appeal for more humanitarian help, saying UN and international aid had not been enough to cope with the huge numbers of refugees.

“We have 26 refugee camps in the Kurdistan Region. It is very difficult to manage them… We are in a deep crisis but we want to continue being tolerant,” he told the MPs.

According to Sibel Kulaksiz, a senior economist at the World Bank who recently led a mission to the region, the influx of refugees and internally displaced people has seen Kurdistan’s population jump by around 17 per cent, putting severe strain on the local economy and public services.

Remember that the UN is picking our refugees  and that most Syrian refugees who will be admitted to the US by the thousands beginning this fiscal year will be from UN refugee camps.

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