Laayoune, Morocco, January 13, 2012 (MAP)
Laayoune, Morocco, January 13, 2012 (MAP)
Eleven Sahrawi families on Friday benefited from a new family visit flights facilitated by the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), making it the second of such trips in 2012.
Under this programme, members of Sahrawi families living in the Moroccan southern provinces visit their relatives in the Tindouf camps in south-western Algeria, and vice-versa.
Sixty-three people from 11 families were included in the new operation, said a statement of the Moroccan coordination office with the MINURSO.
Therefore, 23 people from 4 families embarked Friday morning aboard a UN aircraft at the airport of Smara (Morocco’s south) bounding for Tindouf, before 40 people from 7 families landed on the same plane from the Tindouf camps, added the same source.
The new exchange brings the number of people who benefit from this humanitarian programme, since its launch in March 2004, to 12,351, including 5934 people from the southern provinces and 6417 people from the camps of Lahmada in Tindouf.