FEATURE-Christians, Muslims flee Baghdad for Kurdistan

By Shamal AqrawiARBIL,

Iraq, Jan 22 (Reuters) -

A Christian shopkeeper who walks with a limp, Adison Brikha fled Baghdad after he was beaten in his shop. He made it to Arbil, in relatively peaceful Iraqi Kurdistan -- but now he's begging for work.

"The gunmen broke into my shop in New Baghdad district and beat me brutally. It was obvious that Christians are no longer wanted in Baghdad," said Brikha, who can barely pay the rent for a tiny house in Arbil for his family of five."I used to own a shop and now I'm begging people to let me work even as a servant or a labourer, but no one will take me because my foot is crippled," he said, through tears.

Tens of thousands of people have fled Baghdad, the epicentre of violence in Iraq. The United Nations, launching an appeal for aid for Iraqis who have fled their homes or left the country, said this month about one in eight Iraqis is now displaced.It said the exodus is the largest long-term movement of people in the Middle East since the creation of Israel in 1948.Many, including non-Kurds, have taken refuge in Kurdistan -- a largely autonomous region in the northern mountains that has been a haven from attacks plaguing other areas since the U.S. invasion of 2003.

But as refugee numbers grow, authorities in Arbil, the Kurdish capital with a population of about a million, are beginning to feel the strain."Over the last two weeks, more than 9,000 people came to Arbil escaping from Baghdad as refugees, and they are mainly Sunnis and Christians," Imad Marouf, head of the disaster relief program in Arbil, part of the Iraqi Red Crescent, told Reuters.

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