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Eritrean refugees will be repatriated from Sudan after rainy season - UN agency

Eritrean refugees will be repatriated from Sudan after rainy season - UN agency

Eritrean returnees in Meskrem village
Thousands of Eritrean refugees will leave eastern Sudan and begin the journey back to their villages when the long rainy season, which had forced the suspension of repatriation, officially ends tomorrow, the United Nations agency for refugees said today.

The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said in Geneva it is set to resume tomorrow the return of about 36,000 Eritreans who have registered to go home from camps located mainly in eastern Sudan.

"The movement was suspended on 8 July because of the long rainy season, which hampers road travel in many parts of eastern Sudan - an area which is hosting some 100,000 Eritrean refugees," a spokesman for UNHCR, Kris Janowski, said at a press briefing.

The first group of 67 Eritrean families, totalling 134 people, were being transported today to a Sudanese transit centre at El Girba, 100 kilometres from the border. They would then move on to the border town of Kassala and transfer at a nearby checkpoint to Eritrean trucks and buses.

Inside Eritrea, they would go to a transit centre in the border town of Tesseney, where they would receive cash, household supplies and enough food from the UN World Food Programme (WFP) to last three months. From Tesseney, they would make their own way to their villages in the Gash-Barka region of southwestern Eritrea, the refugee agency said.

UNHCR planned to send similar convoys from Sudan to Eritrea every fourth day, it said.

The agency would also hand over to the authorities in Sudan's Gadaref state six sites formerly occupied by refugees. The infrastructure at those sites included a hospital ward, and water facilities. Gadaref would also receive 1,300 desks for local schools, UNHCR said.