Palestine refugees from Iraq resettled in Chile

Finally a window of opportunity opened with Chile," said Laurens Jolles, head of the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) in Syria.

The resettlement is the first of its kind since Palestinians fleeing violence in Iraq were first interned in tents at al-Tanf in May 2006. An earlier plan to resettle some of the Palestinians in Sudan was delayed after some of the refugees rejected the idea.

Since October 2007 al-Tanf has doubled in size from 351 to 733 Palestinian refugees, following the tightening of asylum restrictions in Syria, which already hosts an estimated 1.5 million Iraqi refugees.

Al-Walid camp on the Iraq side of the border is home to about 1,560 Palestinian refugees. So far the UNHCR has resettled one family of eight with several sick children from the camp -- to Norway in August last year. A third camp near the border, al-Hol in north-eastern Syria, houses some 300.

The 39 refugees who flew to Chile from Damascus on 5 April included 23 children. They have been resettled in La Calera, 130 kilometers north of Santiago, where local authorities are providing health care, education and Spanish classes. Chile has agreed to host 117 refugees in total and two more groups are expected to depart later this month to be resettled in San Felipe, north of Santiago and other neighborhoods in the capital.

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