23 Mar 2006 19:05:15 GMT


BAGHDAD, March 23 (Reuters) - Reports of kidnappings, murder and persecution of Palestinian refugees in Iraq have forced many to try to flee, but for most there is nowhere else to go.

Jordan's closure of its borders with Iraq on Sunday to prevent the entry of 89 Palestinians seeking sanctuary from Iraq's carnage shows the refugees have few options.

Sheikh Ayman Mustafa, a 33-year-old Palestinian cleric who lives in one of the rundown apartment buildings in Baghdad that are home to thousands of refugees, said an explosion of sectarian violence had made it too risky to stay in Iraq.

"Palestinians have been abducted and later found dead," he told Reuters. "Many families have fled, others have come to me seeking protection."

The Palestinians, who braved bandits and insurgents along the treacherous highway to get to the Jordanian border, may now have to turn around and come back to Baghdad.

The Jordanian authorities, fearful of a large influx of refugees from among the 34,000 Palestinians estimated by U.N. officials to live in Iraq, closed the border on Sunday after a busload arrived earlier in the day.

The group has been stuck in a camp in no-man's land between Iraq and Jordan since.

In New York, Riyad Mansour, Palestinian observer to the United Nations, on Thursday appealed for international intervention. He said in a letter to the U.N. Security Council that many of those stranded were children and they had little shelter and food, placing them "in an extremely precarious situation under the harsh desert climate".

Amnesty International said Jordan was obliged to allow the Palestinians over the border.

"Palestinians have been killed in Iraq and they will risk death if they return. We also call on armed groups to stop these killings," Nicole Choueiry, the human rights group's spokeswoman, said by telephone from London.

PALESTINIANS IN THE MORGUE

"This period is very difficult for the Palestinians. They are kidnapped and killed and tortured," said a Palestinian diplomat in Baghdad who asked not to be named.

Sixty Palestinians had been killed since the invasion, he said, before adding: "Now we find about two to three Palestinians in the morgue every week."

Arriving in Iraq in three waves in 1948, 1967 and 1991, Palestinians enjoyed financial support from Saddam Hussein, who considered himself the champion of the Arab cause.

Their schooling and health care were subsidised, generating resentment among Iraqis who paid dearly through three wars in a quarter of a century, crippling sanctions and one of the world's most ruthless police states.

These days, the mostly Sunni Muslim Arab Palestinians sit in the rundown Baladiyaat district of Baghdad hoping they will not get caught up in sectarian violence which has killed hundreds of people since last month's bombing of a Shi'ite Muslim shrine.

Palestinians say Iraqis began attacking them after a deadly car bomb in a nearby area last year. Their anxieties grew after a popular state television show then featured four bruised Palestinians "confessing" to the attack.

"My brother was completely innocent," said Tahir Nooreddine of one of the suspects.

Sheikh Mustafa said gunmen opened fire on the Palestinian compound and wounded some residents after the bombing of the Shi'ite Golden Mosque in Samarra on Feb. 22 sparked sectarian reprisals against Sunnis.

"We are sick of living in fear and anxiety," said a resident of the Baladiyaat compound. "We are all threatened here for no reason except that we are Palestinian."

A police official declined to comment on whether Palestinians were being specifically targeted.

Many of the refugees have close family ties in Jordan, where life would be much safer. But Amman says it cannot absorb any new influx of refugees.

For now, the refugees can only watch violence tear apart the only home they know.