By Chris Arsenault
ROME (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - A food crisis is unfolding in southern Iraq, where thousands of internally displaced refugees who have moved there from other parts of the country do not have enough to eat, a United Nations agency said on Tuesday.
"Violence continues to cause ongoing displacement in central, western and northern areas of Iraq," WFP spokeswoman Elisabeth Byrs told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. Kurdish forces are battling the Sunni Islamist group ISIS in part of northern Iraq.
"We are gravely concerned about food security and the humanitarian situation."
Internally displaced people who cannot reach the Kurdish controlled north, or who cannot afford to stay there because of rising prices and overcrowding, are fleeing to the south, Byrs said.
Many are living in unoccupied public buildings or mosques that local authorities have provided as shelter, or with host communities.
Most of the families who moved to the south said they spent their meager savings on transport to get there, the WFP said.
About 50,000 displaced families, roughly 250,000 people, in the southern areas of Basrah, Thi Qar, Qadissiya, Missan, Wassit, Muthanna, Najaf, Kerbala, and Babel are currently receiving aid, the WFP reported.
It is not clear how many additional families who have moved to the south are not receiving aid, Byrs said.
Overall, more than 2 million Iraqis have been internally displaced, and about 1.4 million of them are receiving WFP aid, Byrs said.