UN says helping some migrants leave Iran

The UN migration agency says it is helping some vulnerable migrants caught up in the Middle East war to leave Iran and receiving requests to assist hundreds of others.

The International Organization for Migration says migrants in Iran were highly vulnerable amid heavy bombardment and mass displacement, lacking support structures relied on by Iranian nationals.

The United Nations agency says it “stands ready to support migrants and other third-country nationals caught in the crisis.”

“We have already assisted some migrants to return home from Iran,” David John, IOM’s director of resettlement and movement management, tells reporters in Geneva.

“The requests now are in the hundreds (and) the number is increasing by the day,” he says, without providing details on the nationalities assisted or requesting help.

John says assistance requests from migrants’ home countries could soon be “in the thousands.”

UNHCR, the UN refugee agency, said Thursday that as many as 3.2 million people had been displaced in Iran.

Some were refugee families who were “particularly vulnerable, given their already precarious situation and limited support networks.”

Iran is the largest refugee-hosting country globally, and it counts a large migrant population, including millions of Afghans and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, according to the UN.