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. 'The houses around mine had all been destroyed,' Mr Hassoun said. 'Our house was full of smoke, it was a mess. We cleaned up the house and spent the night there, but the bombing started at seven in the evening and lasted until the morning. There were all sorts of bombs. My children couldn't sleep. There is no water, there is no electricity. I saw no reconstruction.' Mr Hassoun is lucky - his house was still standing. 'My house was destroyed,' says Umm Hussein, whose husband returned to Fallujah last week to assess the damage. She cradles her sick son in her arms. 'Every house in our neighbourhood was destroyed, we have nothing left. How can I take my baby to the hospital?' Sheik Hussein Abo Ahmed, who acts as a sort of head of the university camp, led a demonstration in front of the Green Zone two weeks ago to demand greater rights for the refugees - among them unfettered return, compensation for destroyed homes and dead family members, and the right of journalists to be let into the city to film the damage. But he fears that Fallujah will never be the same again. 'I saw one of the boys in the camp yesterday playing with a toy gun, and I asked him, why don't you play with a soccer ball, and he said 'I want to kill American soldiers for killing my uncle and my father',' Mr Hussein said. Only 8,500 of the 200,000 people who fled Fallujah before the US military reinvaded the city in early November have gone back. The refugees are spread out across the central part of the country, some staying with relatives, others in bomb shelters, camps, mosques or whatever can be found. A Baghdad taxi driver said: 'I don't understand why the Iraqi government would give the US army permission to attack Fallujah but do nothing for the people who lived there.'