The Red Cross flew a group of prisoners of war (POWs) home from Ethiopia to Eritrea on Sunday in an ongoing weekend operation to repatriate ailing troops after a peace pact, it announced here.
A chartered Boeing 727 took off from Addis Ababa airport for Asmara in the morning carrying 139 wounded or sick Eritrean soldiers home, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said.
On Saturday, the plane made two round trips between the capitals of the Horn of Africa, which went to war in May 1998 over disputed border territory at the cost of tens of thousands of lives in the next two years.
The repatriations of the freed POWs were the first direct passenger flights allowed since both governments kept their air space closed after a truce in June, which was followed by a comprehensive peace treaty on December 12.
Ethiopian regular soldiers, police officers and militia forces who arrived home on Saturday were given a heroes' welcome with full military honors and a brass band, but many looked wan and drawn and had to sit down in the shade of the Turkish Memphis Air jet to get out of a scorching sun.
The ICRC has repatriated 359 Eritreans and 230 Ethiopians since Saturday morning and the plane was due to return from Asmara later Sunday carrying a final group of between 120 and 130 released Ethiopian POWs.
The Ethiopians were taken to the military hospital here on their return.
Red Cross officials have visited 2,600 Eritrean PoWs in Ethiopia and 1,000 Ethiopians in Eritrea but stressed this was not the total number.
"In international armed conflicts, some people turn up at the end of the fighting, so I will not be surprised" to see more prisoners, ICRC delegate in Ethiopia Alain Aeschlimann said on Friday. "We will see in coming weeks."
The ICRC is organizing the operation as an independent and neutral intermediary under the terms of the Geneva Conventions on POWs. Red Cross doctors are taking part.
"Before each flight, ICRC delegates talk to each prisoner in private to make certain that they are going back to their respective countries of their own free will," an ICRC statement issued in Geneva said Saturday -- ADDIS ABABA (AFP)
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