afrol News, 11 November - The UN refugee agency has expressed regret over the forced repatriation of 40 Somali asylum seekers to Mogadishu.

The UN High Commissioner for Refugees said Djibouti authorities forced the 40 asylum seekers on to a plane which flew them back to the Somali capital on Tuesday.

The migrants, including six women and seven children, were among thousands of people to have braved the 30-hour journey to Yemen with little food or water, often on rickety vessels.

The migrants were rescued aboard a Dutch naval ship, the Evertsen by anti-piracy patrols in the Red Sea headed to Yemen late last month.

Yemeni authorities refused to accept them and Djibouti first agreed to take them in then sent them back to Somalia, according to the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees

Somali’s radical Islamist rebels group, Al Shabab has waged attacks against government, seeking to overthrow the Horn of Africa’s fragile transitional government in the last two years.

The insurgency has created one of the world's worst humanitarian crises, with 1 million internally displaced people in the Horn of Africa country and others fleeing to Yemen, Ethiopia, Kenya and Djibouti.

Al-Shabaab has also been accused by the US of providing safe-haven and logistical support to al-Qaeda, the terrorist organisation led by Osama bin Laden.

There has not been a functioning central administration in Somalia, since the ouster of Mohamed Siad Barre, the former dictator, in 1991.

By staff writer

© afrol News

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