The Palestinian consulate in Erbil, in Kurdistan region, north of Iraq, said authorities released two Palestinian refugees after they had been kept in custody for days.

Ambassador Ahmad AlDik said that following instructions by the Minister of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates along with efforts by the Palestine Embassy in Syria and Palestine’s General Embassy in Erbil, the refugees were freed.

Hundreds of Palestinian refugees are taking shelter in Iraq’s Kurdistan region, where they have been subjected to squalid humanitarian conditions.

Palestinian refugees have been residing in Iraq since 1948, when the Arab-Israeli conflict caused large-scale displacement throughout the region. That movement was followed by another group who fled the Occupied Territories as a result of the 1967 Arab-Israeli war and later by a third group who fled from the Gulf countries in the aftermath of the 1991 Gulf war.

Persecution of members of the Palestinian community in Iraq began almost immediately after the fall of the former Saddam Hussein’s regime in April 2003. Palestinians were subjected to harassment, targeted attacks, kidnapping, abduction, torture and extra-judicial killings.

Hundreds of Palestinian families were forcibly evicted from government and privately-owned housing, by groups of armed Shi’a militia as well as landlords who had received minimal rent from the government. Large numbers of Palestinians were dismissed from their employment, and the widespread violence in the aftermath of the US invasion caused the exodus of hundreds of families.