BBC NEWS | Middle East | Iraqis return home 'in thousands'
Wednesday, 21 November 2007, 11:36 GMT
An estimated 1,000 people a day are returning across Iraq's borders having previously moved abroad to escape the violence, Iraqi authorities say.
Most of the returnees are coming from Syria - and very few from Jordan, where better-off refugees tended to go.
An improving security situation - but also the lack of job opportunities for Iraqis in Syria - may account for the move, correspondents say.
However, at least five people died in a bombing in Ramadi on Wednesday.
A suicide bomber slammed a vehicle into a courthouse compound, police said.
The attack came as a sudden return to violence in a region which has become markedly more peaceful since Sunni tribesmen joined forces with the US military to tackle al-Qaeda militants last year.
Violence falls
Over 4.4m Iraqis are thought to have been displaced by violence since the US-led invasion of 2003 - but a growing trickle of those who fled the country are now coming back.
Iraq's ministry of migration told the BBC about 1,000 people were returning every day.
The UN's refugee agency, the UNHCR, estimates about 45,000 Iraqis returned from Syria in October - the first month of the school year.
One factor in their return is likely to be a sharp and sustained drop in all kinds of violence, particularly in parts of the capital Baghdad, following a US-Iraqi military "surge".
But the stream of returnees from Syria is not being matched by return traffic from Jordan, where there may be as many as a million Iraqi refugees.
That is probably because those in Syria are poorer, so their savings have run out more quickly, says the BBC's Jim Muir in Baghdad.
Iraqis Return Home! Liberals Are Desperate!
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