The United Nations said on Tuesday the number of people displaced within Iraq due to Islamic State group violence and fighting has exceeded three million.
A statement by a U.N. agency - International Organisation for Migration (IOM) - said at least 3.09 million Iraqi people were displaced between January 2014 and June 2015 within Iraq, reported the Associated Press.
"The continuing displacement in Iraq is deeply concerning," said Thomas Lothar Weiss, IOM Chief in Iraq, according to a press release.
IOM's latest Displacement Tracking Matrix (DTM) report said two-thirds of displaced people were from the provinces of Anbar, Salahuddin and Nineveh. Over two million displaced people have been housed in private places while more than 638,000 IDPs are being accommodated in shelters. .
Anbar province has been the hardest hit by fighting between Sunni jihadists, ISIS and pro-government Shia forces. Militants of the ISIS group seized Ramadi last month after government forces withdrew, according to AFP.
The U.N. agency said more than 276,000 Iraqis were displaced over the past two months amid fighting over Anbar's provincial capital Ramadi. Most of the internally displaced persons (IDPs) were displaced to Baghdad (45 percent) or within Anbar province (35 percent).
"We are reinforcing our capacity in NFI and shelter provision, health and psychosocial services, and livelihoods assistance in order to respond. IOM relies on our partnerships with local authorities to access, identify and provide the most vulnerable displaced persons with the immediate life-saving humanitarian assistance they desperately need," Weiss said.
A U.N. official recently said some than eight million Iraqis need immediate life-saving support, according to the BBC. "The crisis in Iraq is one of the most complex and volatile anywhere in the world," Lise Grande,UN's Humanitarian Co-ordinator for Iraq, said earlier this month.
The Islamic State group, also referred as IS/ISIS/ISIL or Daesh in Arabic, captured large swaths of Syria and Iraq in an offensive against government forces in June 2014. The number of IDPs has reached more than seven million in Syria since 2011.
