1,167 Ethiopian refugees flee to Sudan: UNHCR
May 29, 2022
New York [US], May 29 (ANI/Xinhua): The United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) on Sunday disclosed 1,167 Ethiopian refugees have arrived in Sudan in recent days.
The UNHCR in its latest situation update report said the vast majority of the new arrivals were from Ethiopia with 1,130 crossing over to Sudan's Blue Nile state from Ethiopia's Benishangul-Gumuz region.
"The remaining 37 new Ethiopian refugees' arrivals entered Sudan through border crossings in Sudan's Geadref state," the UNHCR report disclosed.
Tensions have been high for years in Ethiopia's western Benishangul-Gumuz region, with periodic outbreaks of ethnic strife leaving scores dead and tens of thousands fleeing to other parts of Ethiopia as well as to neighboring Sudan.
The violence is mainly over access to power and land resources.
Benishangul-Gumuz region, located along the Ethiopia-Sudan border, hosts Ethiopia's largest development project - the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD), which is under construction on the Blue Nile River with a construction cost of close to 5 billion US dollars.
Separately, tens of thousands of Ethiopians have also crossed to Sudan since the start of the military confrontations between the federal and regional forces in the Tigray region broke out in November 2020. (ANI/Xinhua)
