A humanitarian worker familiar with the deportations, speaking to AFP on condition of anonymity, said most of the returnees had arrived from Saudi Arabia in the past 10 days. The migrants are kept in detention facilities in Saudi Arabia before being flown back to Ethiopia, and it is unclear how thoroughly Saudi authorities are screening them for the virus. Later on Monday night, Foreign Minister Gedu Andargachew took to Twitter to criticise not Saudi Arabia but rather the Ethiopian migrants and the traffickers who help them go abroad. "Saudi Arabia and other countries are fed up both with our human traffickers and migrants. Up to half a million Ethiopians were in Saudi Arabia when officials there launched a crackdown on illegal migration in 2017, according to the IOM.

Source: Ethiopian News April 16, 2020 08:54 UTC