Over 1,400 African refugees arrive in Yemen

More than 1,400 African refugees arrived in Yemen's southern and eastern port cities during the past two weeks, the Yemeni Interior ministry said in a statement on Saturday. The refugees, 1,188 from Somalia and 166 from Ethiopia, arrived in Yemen's southern port cities of Taiz, Shabwa and Hadramout and were placed in a key refugee center of the Kharaz area in the southern province of Lahj, said the ministry, which blamed the drought-related crisis in the Horn of Africa for the rising influx of African refugees to Yemen. Another 70 illegal immigrants from Eritrea were arrested in Yemen's western port city of Al-Hodayda pending legal proceedings to deport them. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said in April that the escalating influx of African refugees posed a heavy burden on Yemen's limited resources. Statistics recently released by the UNHCR office in Yemen showed that the number of African refugees who arrived in Yemen had amounted to 48,782.