Alarm as Ethiopia says returning Eritrea refugees to Tigray camps
Gov’t says it is now safe to bring back refugees who fled monthlong fighting to the northern region’s camps but the UN calls the move ‘absolutely unacceptable’.
![There are 96,000 Eritrean refugees registered in Ethiopia. Most live in Tigray, which borders Eritrea [File: Tiksa Negeri/Reuters]](https://www.aljazeera.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/2017-11-09T175942Z_709474952_RC1B3B6B8DB0_RTRMADP_3_ETHIOPIA-REFUGEES.jpg?resize=770%2C513)
Ethiopia’s government has said it is returning Eritrean refugees to camps in the northern Tigray region, a move criticised by the United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR) as “absolutely unacceptable”.
In a statement on Friday asserting that the fighting in Tigray is over, the Ethiopian government said its military offensive against the now-fugitive regional government “was not a direct threat” to the nearly 100,000 Eritrean refugees registered in Ethiopia – even as international aid groups said four of their staffers had been killed, at least one in a refugee camp in Tigray, which borders Eritrea.