LAUREN FRAYER
BAGHDAD

A DeclinE in violence has prompted Iraqi refugees to pack up and return home, with the government yesterday claiming 46,030 people had crossed back over the borders last month alone.

Brigadier General Qassim al Moussawi, the spokesman for a US-Iraqi military push to pacify Baghdad, said border authorities recorded 46,030 people returning to Iraq in October and attributed the large number to the "improving security situation".

"The level of terrorist operations has dropped in most of the capital's neighbourhoods, due to the good performance of the armed forces," al Moussawi told reporters. He did not give numbers of Iraqis returning home before last month.

October's numbers coincide with Syria and Jordan tightening their borders to Iraqi refugees. Syria is home to at least 1.2 million refugees, and Jordan to about 750,000.

According to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, two million Iraqis have fled their country. Besides Syria and Jordan, Egypt has absorbed 100,000. About 54,000 Iraqis are in Iran, 40,000 in Lebanon, 10,000 in Turkey and 200,000 in various Persian Gulf countries.

The US admitted only 1608 Iraqi refugees in the past fiscal year. Sweden has admitted more than 18,000 since 2006, the highest number in Europe, but it, too, is tightening asylum rules.

However, the remnants of the brutality that have forced people to flee their homeland keep turning up. The Iraqi Army announced the discovery of 17 bodies in a mass grave north of Baghdad in an area troops have only recently been able to enter after driving out al Qaeda fighters in regions north and west of Baghdad.

The mass grave was found in brushland near a school in Hashimiyat, west of Baquba, said Colonel Ihsan al Shimari. Baquba, 35 miles north-east of Baghdad, is the provincial capital of Diyala, where al Qaeda in Iraq is believed to have a strong presence.

The victims were probably kidnapped at fake checkpoints on a nearby road leading to Baquba, a route dubbed the "road of death".

The discovery came a day after the US military announced another mass grave with 22 bodies had been found in the Lake Tharthar area of western Anbar province. It was the second mass grave discovered in that area in a month.-AP