Poverty and fear dominate life for Iraq's Gypsies

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http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/BAB052597.htm

HADID, Iraq, Jan 4 (Reuters) - Among the millions of impoverished Iraqis, Jameel Mahmoud Hassan has the dubious distinction of being among the poorest of all.

One of a group of Iraqi Gypsies who have squatted for years on a fetid patch of land in a village north of Baghdad, he has spent his life in squalor, and now fear.

Home is nothing more than a leaky tent strung up with sticks and torn carpet on a plot strewn with dirty plastic bags, rusted cans and broken bottles.

A stack of kerosene cans with mud on top serves as a makeshift oven. Flies swirl everywhere -- on garbage, on the giggling children, on a dog tethered to a tree.

Inside the tent, his wife and five children, their ragged clothes caked with dirt, crowd on to carpets and a small cot. A kerosene lamp is the only source of warmth on a chilly winter morning.