The following is a list of current Assyrian towns and villages. It is worth mentioning that a good amount of Assyrians in the Middle East live in cities and not rural areas because of events during the 20th century (see Assyrian genocide.) These cities include Arbil, Dohuk, Mosul, Baghdad, Basra, Tehran, Urmia, Aleppo, Damascus, Homs and Istanbul. Currently, there are a number of villages in northern Iraq that are emptied. This is mostly due to the Al-Anfal Campaign of the 1980s.