BOSASO, Somalia
Around 1,200 Somali refugees returned home on Sunday through the northeastern Bosaso Port after fleeing crisis-hit Yemen, the port city's mayor has said.
"Bosaso Port has received a boat carrying 1,200 Somali refugees who had fled Yemen," Bosaso's Mayor Hassan Abdullah Hassan said in a press conference at the port city on Sunday.
Abdullah asserted that this was the largest number of Somalis to return from Yemen in a single day since the launch of a Saudi Arabia-led military offensive against Yemen's Shiite Houthi group over a month ago.
Abdullah also said that most of the refugees who arrived on Sunday had been suffering illnesses and that most of them were hospitalized following their return.
He added that returning refugees would be given temporary shelter in makeshift tents.
Mohamed Ahmed, one of the returning Somalis, told The Anadolu Agency that the refugees had rented the boat from Somali merchants.
Sunday's incident comes despite past announcements by the Somali government that it had evacuated all its nationals from Yemen.
Over 300,000 Somalis who had fled a years-long civil war in their country had been living in refugee camps in Yemen prior to the Saudi coalition's military campaign.
