Mauritanian refugees return home

The first of the returnees are mostly women, children and the elderly

More than 100 black Mauritanian refugees are returning home after 18 years in exile in Senegal.

The start of this repatriation process by the United Nations refugee agency follows the deal that Mauritania and Senegal signed last November.

UNHCR press officer Francis Kpatinde told the BBC that the repatriation is voluntary, saying, "those who are going back home, decided to go back home".

The citizens were expelled from Mauritania after racial riots in 1989.

Thirty-five thousand black Mauritanians fled into exile after ethnic purges in 1989 by Maaouya Ould Sid'Ahmed Taya's Arab-dominated government.

Repatriation deal

Some returned of their own accord.

To date 24,000 Mauritanians are still in Senegal.

After Sidi Ould Cheikh Abdallahi won run-off elections in March 2007, becoming Mauritania's first democratically elected president since the country gained independence from France in 1960, he asked those remaining to come home.

The repatriation deal, aided by the UNHCR, will allow 12,000 refugees to return home and the programme will last until December.

The first of the repatriated Mauritanians are mostly, "women, children and some old people," Mr Kpatinde said.

Adding that, "all the refugees will receive assistance - three months of food rations and they are going to be assisted in the coming months to reintegrate them into their country."

The UNHCR, which appealed last August for funds to repatriate the Mauritanians, said it had set up reception centres for the returnees in the southern border towns of Kaedi and Rosso, with contributions from France, Italy and the United States.