United Nations refugee agency spokesman Adrian Edwards said "some 54,000 have gone to Baghdad, 15,000 to Sulaymaniyah in the Kurdistan region of Iraq and 2,100 people have fled to Babylon."
In an interview on Al-Arabiyya news, a member of the parliaments security and defense committee, Mohammad Al Karbouli, accused Iraqi Prime Minister, Haidar Al-Abadi of seeking to criminalise and imprison those who have fled in Abu Ghraib prison, as a remedy to the crisis.
“We have been in negotiations with the government, and I have personally heard the prime minister utter the words ‘these people need to be contained before they expand’ to Iraqi politician Salim Jabouri”, said Dr. Al Karbouli.
One issue that lays at the heart of the crisis, as Al Karbouli underscored, is that no individual travelling to the capital, Baghdad, can enter unless they have a ‘kafeel’ - sponsor.
Since the start of 2014, approximately 3 million people have been displaced inside Iraq. The United Nations says that of those displaced 400,000 have come from Al Anbar.