BABIL, Iraq — For displaced Iraqi citizen Saad al-Jabouri, this year’s Ramadan has been a good one. He left Kirkuk with his family of four on July 20, 2014. They were generously welcomed in the city of Hillah, in the center of Babil province, south of Baghdad, where the residents provided them with a free iftar after a long day of fasting.

Jabouri told Al-Monitor that the food he received was more than he needed, noting, “Many displaced who moved from north and west Iraq to Babil feel the same.”

The UN delegation in Iraq announced June 23 that the number of displaced people in Iraq, largely from northern and western regions, had reached over 3 million people distributed among all provinces, as a result of the Islamic State (IS) invading vast areas in Iraq since June 2014.

Al-Monitor attended free iftars prepared for the poor in mosques in the holy city of Najaf. During one of these ceremonies, Ali al-Khalsi, a displaced Shiite from Diyala province, told Al-Monitor he “asked the local government to grant [him] permanent residency in Najaf because of the great treatment and hospitality expressed by the city’s residents.”