UN agency: Iraqis still live in crisis

The United Nations refugee agency, UNHCR, says the Iraq war produced the worst humanitarian crisis in the Middle East in 60 years. According to the agency, 1.5 million people are displaced inside Iraq, of which 500,000 are squatting in camps or public buildings. In Baghdad, 200,000 people live in 120 camps. There are also hundreds of thousands of Iraqis abroad, mainly in neighboring Jordan and Syria. Still too scared to go home, Iraqis who fled the war face trauma and hardship. Many find it impossible to get work and slide into poverty. Aid workers say many Iraqi women are falling into the hands of sex traffickers in the Middle East. Many Iraqis feel let down by their leaders, who are stuck in a political deadlock almost six months after an election that produced no outright winner and as yet no new government. Many displaced Iraqis cannot afford to return to their old neighborhoods. Their abandoned homes have been stripped of electric cables and furniture by looters, doors smashed in by U.S. troops looking for weapons and windows shattered by bombs.