Thursday, March 28, 2024

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Dog walks 60 km, catches up with owners at Kirkuk refugee camp

 Dog walks 60 km, catches up with owners  at Kirkuk refugee camp

Dog (representational photo)

Dog (representational photo)
Kirkuk (IraqiNews.com) A dog has refused to be left behind and walked 60 kilometers to catch up with his owners who migrated to refugee camps southwest of Kirkuk to escape bitter humanitarian conditions under Islamic State control.

The dog walked the distance to reunite with the owner and his family who fled the Islamic State stronghold town of Hawija to refugee camps southwest of the province.

“Bitter humanitarian conditions in Hawija have prompted residents to leave homes due to food and medicine shortage, as well as antipathy they feel towards IS,” Hassan al-Jubouri told Alsumaria News. “I own a dog of a German species..it follows me wherever I go. Days earlier, our family decided to leave home due to the difficult conditions, but my aged father decided that he would stay so as not to give the terrorist group a chance to seize our homes in the precinct,” said Jubouri.

“We decided to leave the dog with him to guard the house, and left. We reached a checkpoint in Khaled, southwest of Kirkuk, where we were held for interrogation and later transferred to a refugee camp in Daqouq,” he added.

Jubouri said his father phoned them saying that the dog had escaped, and that he had no idea where he headed. “We did not expect he would make it to the village where we settled,” he added. “His arrival after walking 60 kilometers surprised the whole family”.

There are an estimated 5000 families in IS-held towns southwest of Kirkuk. The United Nations estimates there are more than three million internally-displaced people in Iraq due to violence and difficult life conditions that came up with the emergence with IS in 2014.

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