The number of newly displaced people within their own countries increased sharply in 2006, with the Middle East particularly hard hit, according to a global survey released on Monday.

Some 4 million people were internally displaced during 2006 as a result of armed conflict, more than twice as many as in the previous year, said the report on global internal displacement situation, which was released by the Geneva-based Internal Displacement Monitoring Center.

The total number of internally displaced people worldwide was nearly 25 million as of the end of 2006, according to the report. This is about twice the number of refugees who managed to cross an international border.

The conflict between Israel and the militant group Hezbollah as well as the violence in Iraq accounted for almost half of the new displacements in 2006.

While most Lebanese and Israelis were able to return soon after the August 2006 ceasefire, the Iraq crisis continues unabated and has dramatically aggravated what is one of the world's worst internal displacement crisis, the report said.

More people have been forced to flee their homes in Iraq than in any other country in the world. Many of those uprooted by the ongoing sectarian violence and military operations - more than 700,000 since February 2006 -- remain within Iraqi borders.

"The massive scale of forced displacement in recent months adds to the dramatic worsening of the humanitarian situation in Iraq," said Tomas Colin Archer, head of the Norwegian Refugee Council, which founded the Internal Displacement Monitoring Center.

"After centuries of cohabitation among different religious and ethnic communities, the current wave of displacements leads to increased separation and could result in a permanent redrawing of the ethnic and religious map of Iraq," Archer said.

According to the report, other regions also saw large-scale new internal displacement in 2006. Hundreds of thousands of civilians were displaced in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Sudan (Darfur), Sri Lanka and Colombia.

Improving the delivery of humanitarian aid to conflict-affected populations must remain a priority, but this must not divert attention from states' responsibility to address internal displacement at the political level, the report said.

"Ultimately, only political solutions can resolve the essentially political problems that lie at the heart of most conflicts causing displacement," it said.