Baghdad urges its citizens to return home from Syria

Iraq's government is strongly urging Iraqi citizens currently in Syria to return home in order to avoid getting injured or killed due to the deteriorating crisis there.

Many of the Iraqis residing in Syria initially fled during as a result of the strife in Iraq during the 8-year-war there. The Iraqi government is calling upon them to return to their home country due to the "increasing attacks," on them in Syria (reports France 24 and the Irish Examiner). The Iraqi government spokesman Ali Dabbagh stated that "Iraqis are guests who live temporarily in Syria and the Iraqi government calls on them to return to the country." This call comes a day after the bodies of two Iraqi journalists who were stabbed and shot dead in the Syrian capital were handed over to the Iraqi authorities at the Al-Waleed border post -- which is located on the southern end of Iraq's border with Syria. The United Nations High Commission for Refugees reported that around 1.5 million Iraqi refugees are in Syria with only about 150,000 of them registered.