UAE Red Crescent opens a school for Mosul refugees

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – A school for children of Mosul, built by the United Arab Emirates’ (UAE) Red Crescent society opens Saturday in the Bahrka district north of Erbil, a Kurdish official said.

Hamza Hamd, a spokesman at the Erbil governor's office told Rudaw that the opening ceremony would be “attended by the UAE Consul General and the well-known Arab singer Hussain Al Jassmi as goodwill ambassador for the United Nations, along with a number of Kurdish officials.”

Last September, the Emirates Red Crescent handed over to Kurdish authorities the keys to a new camp the organization had built for thousands of Iraqi refugees who have taken shelter in the Kurdistan Region.

The Dibaga Camp near Makhmour was built by the Emirates Red Crescent at the cost of US$10 million and it consists of 1,000 housing units.

According to local authorities in Erbil more than 1.8 million are sheltered in the Kurdistan Region since last year, most of them from Mosul, Ramadi and Tikrit as well as many Kurds from Syrian Kurdistan (Rojava).

Hamd said that the UAE Red Crescent has given substantial assistance and aid for refugees, and that its current plan is to build hundreds of homes to accommodate the refugees.