30 Palestinian refugees who fled Iraq to Jordan in 2003 flown to Brazil

Thirty Palestinians who fled Iraq to Jordan and spent more than four years living in a desert camp near the Iraqi border were flown early Thursday to Brazil for resettlement, the United Nations refugee agency said.

The refugees were part of a group of 108 Iraqi-based Palestinians who escaped to Jordan following the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq and were settled in the Ruweishid Camp, 350 kilometers (217 miles) east of the Jordanian capital, Amman.

With the departure of this group, only nine refugees will remain in the camp awaiting resettlement in the United States, UNHCR said. The camp will be shut down in the coming weeks.

Ruweishid was created months before the war started in 2003 to provide shelter to what many feared would be a large wave of refugees from Iraq. It has hosted more than 2,000 refugees of different nationalities, many of whom were resettled in a third country.

But the bulk of Iraqi refugees in the past two years, estimated at more than 2.5 million, live in towns mainly in Jordan and Syria.

Brazil, which has a large Arab community estimated at about 12 million, mostly of Lebanese and Syrian descent, agreed to take the Palestinians and has planned to settle them in Sao Paulo and Rio Grande do Sul regions.

The UNHCR has said the families will receive medical care, rented accommodations and assistance for two years.