Forty-thousand people have escaped violence in the Iraqi cities of Tikrit and Samarra as the army continues fighting Takfiri militants in the region, says the International Organization for Migration (IOM).
The Geneva-based organization said on Friday that its sources on the ground estimated 40,000 people fled the two cities, after half a million abandoned Mosul earlier.
"Insecurity is spreading across the whole of Iraq and we foresee a protracted humanitarian crisis… It is getting worse by the hour and we do not have the necessary funding to respond adequately,” said Mandie Alexander, the IOM emergency coordinator in Baghdad, in a statement.
IOM spokeswoman Christiane Berthiaume also made comments about the situation at a press conference in Geneva, saying, “People are on the move and most of them are fleeing the fighting."
"Schools and mosques have been converted into makeshift clinics to tend to the injured and chronically ill," Berthiaume said.
Also on Friday, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay expressed concerns over summary executions and extra-judicial killings by the al-Qaeda-linked Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), adding that hundreds were probably killed and thousands injured by the violence.
On June 10, the militants took control of Nineveh province, including its provincial capital Mosul, in a lightning advance, forcing “over 500,000 people in and around the city” to flee, according to the IOM.
The militants have vowed to continue their raid towards the capital Baghdad.
Takfiri groups, including the so-called ISIL, are reportedly coming to Iraq from neighboring Syria and Saudi Arabia to undermine security in the country.
Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has blamed Saudi Arabia and Qatar for the security crisis and growing terrorism in his country, denouncing the Al Saud regime as a major supporter of global terrorism.
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