Only 60,000 Kurds Remain in Border Camps, Allies Say

INCIRLIK, Turkey — The number of Kurdish refugees living in tent camps along the Turkish border has fallen from 450,000 to 60,000 as tens of thousands return to their homes in northern Iraq, the allied command said Wednesday.

Some allied troops are getting ready to leave Turkey and the 3,600-square-mile security zone they patrol in northern Iraq, the command said. It did not say when all allied forces will leave.

The troops arrived in mid-April to help Kurds who fled their homes in Iraq for squalid mountain refugee camps after a failed uprising against Saddam Hussein in March.

Swelled by returning refugees, the population of the once nearly deserted northern Iraqi city of Dahuk passed 135,000 on Wednesday, said Army Capt. Robert Johnson, a spokesman for the relief effort.