GENEVA (Reuters):

The United Nations refugee agency appealed yesterday for US$60 million to help some half a million Iraqis being driven from their homes in the violence in their country.

The funds will be used to help the most vulnerable among what is expected by the end of the year to be a total of 4.3 million people either living abroad, mainly in neigh-bouring Arab states, or displaced inside Iraq, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) agency said.

"The longer this conflict goes on, the more difficult it becomes for the hundreds of thousands of people displaced and the communities that are trying to help them, both inside and outside Iraq," said UNHCR chief, Antonio Guterres.

"The burden on host communities and governments in the region is enormous. It is essential that the international community support humanitarian efforts to help the most vulnerable people," said Guterres, U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees.

The agency says the exodus from Iraq - dating back to well before the U.S.-led invasion of 2003 - is the largest long-term population movement in the Middle East since the displacement of Palestinians after the creation of Israel in 1948.

Currently, it says, some 2 million are sheltering outside the country - between 500,000 and 1 million in Syria, 700,00,000 in Jordan, between 20,000 and 80,000 in Egypt and around 40,000 in Lebanon. Many of these fled before 2003.

But the UNHCR says growing numbers are now fleeing the escalating sectarian, ethnic and general violence.

Within the country, whose official population is some 26 million, some 1.7 million are internally displaced, with 40,000-50,000 fleeing their homes every month. The UNHCR said it is planning for an additional total of 600,000 this year.

UNHCR spokesman, Ron Redmond, said whereas earlier Iraqi refugees seeking to cross into neighbouring countries were often from better-off sectors of the population, more and more poorer people were now arriving at borders.