Sectarian violence has displaced more than 30,000 Iraqis -- victims of gunmen who warn them to leave or die -- since a Shi'ite shrine was bombed last month, the government said on Wednesday

The attack on the mosque in Samarra on February 22 touched off reprisals and pushed

Iraq

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Iraq toward civil war. The bodies of hundreds of victims of communal violence have been dumped along the streets, many bound and showing signs of torture.

The bloodshed has also created a potential humanitarian crisis. Thousands of families had to flee their homes after being threatened with death because of their sect.

Sattar Nawrouz, spokesman for the Ministry of Displacement and Migration, estimated 33,000 people have been uprooted by insurgents or Islamic militants bent on purging areas of Shi'ites or Sunni Arabs.

"The cabinet has allocated 500 million dinars ($340,000) to help the expatriated families all over Iraq," said Nawrouz.

That amounts to $10 a person.

The Geneva-based International Organization for Migration (IOM) expressed its concern on Wednesday, putting the number of displaced at 30,000 in Iraq and saying their suffering would not ease as long as sectarian violence rages.

"Iraq is at a very precarious point now and security is continuously deteriorating. Until security is stabilized people will continue to be displaced due to sectarian violence," said Dana Graber, monitoring and reintegration officer at the IOM office in Amman.

About 440 Arab Sunnis fled to

Saddam Hussein

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Saddam Hussein's hometown of Tikrit, 175 km (110 miles) north of Baghdad, the ministry said.

WATCHING FRIEND DIE

Adnan al-Samarraieis is one of them. The engineer took his family and fled Baghdad after he watched Shi'ite militiamen dressed in black gun down his close friend in a restaurant.

"When I saw them killing Abu Omar, I knew my turn would be next. So I took my family and fled to Tikrit, which is a safer place for Sunnis," he said.

The heaviest movement of Iraqis is from Baghdad to Shi'ite provinces in the south, with a surge of movement to Najaf, now home to 1,200 families who moved 160 km (100 miles) away from their homes.

A man who would only give his first name, Saad, said dozens of Sunni insurgents raided his neighborhood in Latifiya south of Baghdad and killed his two brothers. He was shocked to learn that some of the attackers were actually his neighbors.

"They were my neighbors. I knew them, they were greeting us in daylight and killing us during the night," he said, in an abandoned building that is now home to 300 refugees.

Graber said in the past two weeks the IOM has been managing four emergency distributions of food and non-food items in four governorates to aid displaced people.

She said most of the displacement occurred in Baghdad, the Sunni Anbar and mixed Diyala governorates while Najaf has been receiving a surge of displaced people. But she stressed displacement was becoming a problem all over Iraq.

"Its a nationwide problem, not only limited to any particular governorate," she said.

Some 750 people moved to the southern city of Samawwa, said Jabbar Kamil, chairman of the local Red Crescent Organization.

Raheem Abdul Amir, a Shi'ite from Iskandariya, south of Baghdad, went there with his family of 12 after Sunni militants showed up and ordered to them to leave.

"They came to my house and told me to leave the area or be killed along with my whole family. The moment we left the house they bombed it," he said.

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