US-imposed travel restrictions mean they cannot travel freely to their homes
It is a holiday, and children are taking advantage of a day off from school to play soccer and tag in the courtyard of a mosque on the grounds of Baghdad University, which is now home to about 900 refugees from Fallujah.
Some of the families stay inside the mosque, but the rest are camped in tents that provide little shelter from the winter wind that blows across the campus, situated on a peninsula jutting into the River Tigris. At night, temperatures drop to freezing.
As a US Apache helicopter buzzes low overhead, Umm Omar looks on with resignation. Continued fighting has left the camp's residents with a sense of at least semi-permanence. A few weeks ago, Ms Omar set up a school for about 160 of the camp's children. Now she is asking the Ministry of Education to permit her to administer exams, which normally take place at the end of January, at the camp.
'If they are not able to take their exams, some of these children will lose an entire year of school. Some of them are in their last year of high school, and they want to finish this year,' she said.
Raid Hassoun, a father of four who lives with his family in the camp, attempted to return to Fallujah two days ago. After waiting hours at the edge of the city to receive identification cards from the US military he returned to the camp the following morning.