Turkey tension cuts options for fleeing Iraqis

By Peter Apps

LONDON (Reuters) - Any Turkish attack on northern Iraq could further increase the number of people fleeing their homes and cut off one of the few remaining ways out for refugees desperate to leave Iraq, aid workers say.

After a string of attacks on Turkish troops, Ankara has threatened military action in northern Iraq unless Iraqi and U.S. forces crack down on separatist Kurdish guerrillas.

Aid workers say several hundred people fled border villages after shelling last week. Northern Iraq is already home to more than 800,000 displaced people, according to the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.

"If military action does take place, then one of the few safe havens for Iraqis may not be there any more," said UNHCR spokeswoman Astrid van Genderen Stort.

Despite occasional bombings, Iraqi Kurdistan has largely been spared the sectarian violence that has raged elsewhere in the country.

Some 160,000 Iraqis from the main Shia and Sunni groups have fled there to seek safety among the Kurds, prompting Kurdish officials to tighten restrictions on new arrivals.

Any new fighting in the north could push both these new arrivals and Kurds back south towards existing violence.

"Turkish attacks would have the potential to create more displacement," International Organisation for Migration (IOM) Iraq displacement specialist Dana Graber Ladek told Reuters.