CAIRO, Egypt — Um Sami and her family left their home in one of Baghdad’s Sunni neighborhoods after her children and husband were harassed. The Shiite family went first to a more mixed Baghdad neighborhood, then to Jordan, and finally a week later to Cairo. The veiled woman said her family was not comfortable in Egypt, but escaping Baghdad was a must. ‘Our life was a disaster. We could not take it anymore,’ she said. Since the bombing of an important Shiite shrine in Iraq in late February, such stories of sectarian intimidation and fleeing have become common. Within Iraq, thousands are on the move as death threats drive them to neighborhoods where their sect has more strength, international and Iraqi officials say. Reprisal killings between Shiite and Sunni extremists have sharply increased since the shrine bombing, and the bodies of civilian victims often turn up in the streets of Baghdad. An estimated 40,000 people have been internally displaced in Iraq since the blast, said Jean Philippe Chauzy, a spokesman for the U.N.-affiliated International Organization for Migration. Iraqi officials put the number at 65,000, an official in the Iraqi Ministry of Displacement and […]

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