Fleeing Iraqis join large tide of displaced people

Eritrean female asylum seekers sit along with their children on the sidewalk in Sanaa, Yemen, Friday, June 20, 2014. Since April 29, over 200 Eritrean asylum seekers including women and children living on the streets of Sanaa wait to be resettled to a third country. For the first time since the World War II era, the number of people forced from their homes worldwide has surged past 50 million, the United Nations refugee agency said Friday. (AP Photo/Hani Mohammed)AP

TAZA KHORMATO, Iraq -- In a battered car loaded with blankets and clothes, Hassan Abbas and his mother left a dusty town in northern Iraq, fleeing this week's violence and joining what the United Nations says is the largest worldwide population of displaced people since World War II.

The U.N. refugee agency's latest annual report, released Friday, found more than 50 million people worldwide were displaced at the end of 2013, reflecting an ever-expanding web of international conflicts.




"My heart is sick. It's sick. From the fear, the shelling, the explosions," Shukriya said, sobbing. "They say they killed children in Basheer. By God all we want is peace."



The agency found that at the end of 2013, 51.2 million people had been forced from their homes worldwide, including refugees, the internally displaced and asylum seekers. That was the highest figure since the U.N. began collecting numbers in the early 1950s.

It's also 6 million more people than at the end of the previous year, Antonio Guterres, the head of the U.N. refugee agency, said in announcing the report.