Last update - 00:00 02/11/2006
Canada gives asylum to 54 Palestinians who fled Iraq to Jordan
By The Associated Press
AMMAN - Canada is granting asylum to 54 Palestinians living in a Jordanian refugee camp who had fled from their homes in Iraq two years ago, a United Nations representative said Thursday.
The refugees were among 150 Palestinians living in the Ruweishid refugee camp, some 350 kilometers east of the Jordanian capital without valid identification documents, said Robert Breen, Jordan's representative for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.
"They are expected in their new home before the end of the year," Breen said on the telephone.
The camp was founded months before the U.S.-led war on Iraq in 2003 to provide shelter to the refugees fleeing the country.
Breen said Canadian authorities had interviewed all 150 refugees, but accepted only 54, including some families and single men. He said the UNHCR hoped to find a solution for the remaining 96 Palestinians in the camp.
UNHCR has found new homes in Sweden, Denmark, Finland and New Zealand for some 1,200 refugees who fled the war-torn country, the bulk of them Iranian Kurds who had been living in Iraq.