More than 27 500 Eritreans have filed for refugee status in Ethiopia since the two countries reopened their joint border in September, according to EU documents seen by AFP on Friday. More than 24 000 people from northern Eritrea have applied for refugee status at Endabaguna, in the Ethiopian border region of Tigray, and another 3 500 have done so in Afar region farther east, according to a map by the European Commission Humanitarian Aid Operations (ECHO). Hundreds of thousands have fled the country in recent years, many of them taking the perilous cross-Mediterranean route to Europe. As of August 31, there were 174,000 Eritrean refugees in Ethiopia, according to the ECHO document. In October, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said the number of Eritreans seeking refugee in Ethiopia had surged from an average of 53 per day to 390.

Source: Ethiopian News December 21, 2018 17:13 UTC