BAGHDAD, May 1 (UPI) -- Despite U.S. military claims to the contrary, Iraqi Vice President Adel Abdul Mahdi says as many as 100,000 Iraqi families have become refugees.
That could represent as many as 500,000 people, and is much higher than other Iraqi officials have estimated, The New York Times reported.
Last week, Iraqi national security adviser Mowaffak al-Rubaie said 13,750 families -- about 70,000 to 80,000 people -- had been displaced by sectarian fighting.
Mahdi did not disclose his source for the higher estimate, however.
U.S. military leaders have said there is no "widespread movement" of Iraqis fleeing from the fighting that flared after the bombing of a Shiite mosque in Samara in February.
U.S. Army Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch, a senior U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad, says reports of a huge number of displaced persons and refugees appear to be overblown.
"We see reports of tens of thousands of families displaced here in Iraq, and we chase down each and every one of those reports," he said. "We have seen some displacement, pockets of families moving, but not in large numbers."
