Car bomb kills 21 in Iraq; EU warns of donor fatigue

Associated Press

BAGHDAD

The head of the European Union’s humanitarian-aid department warned Thursday that the situation in Iraq is deteriorating rapidly while the world is preoccupied with crises elsewhere.

Shortly after Jean-Louis de Brouwer sounded the stark warning, a wave of car bombs targeting public places after nightfall in Baghdad and in a town just south of the Iraqi capital killed a total of 21 people and wounded scores of others.

No group immediately claimed responsibility for the attacks, but Baghdad and its surroundings have seen near-daily bombings, mostly targeting the country’s majority Shiites or security forces even as authorities struggle to win back territory captured by the Islamic State group.

Earlier in the day, de Brouwer told The Associated Press that the number of displaced people in Iraq has quadrupled in the past year and shows no signs of decreasing.

“The worst is still to come,” he said. “The situation is deteriorating, humanitarian aid is becoming even more essential than it was; the problem is funding.”

Iraq is convulsed in a battle between the government, its militia allies and forces of the Islamic State group that have taken over large parts of the north and west in the country.

The fighting has displaced some 2.7 million people inside the country, including 110,000 who fled from renewed fighting in and around the city of Ramadi in the western Anbar province in the past two weeks.

Many of these are living with other families, inside mosques or in makeshift camps around the western periphery of Baghdad. Meanwhile, there are hundreds of thousands more in the Kurdish northern regions.

“This is quite a matter for concern as the needs are skyrocketing and the resources are not increasing,” said de Brouwer. “I’m afraid there is also — not donor fatigue — but donor exhaustion.”

An even larger refugee problem in neighboring Syria and most recently and earthquake in Nepal has drawn attention away from the slow building crisis in Iraq, he said.