12,000 Southern Sudanese to be flown back home

Some 12,000 Southern Sudanese will from Sunday be repatriated from Khartoum.

The Southerners will be flown home from Khartoum as part of a humanitarian mission between the Sudanese Ministry of Social Welfare, the International Organisation for Migration (IOM), the South Sudanese Commission and the National Centre for Displacement and Voluntary Repatriation.. 

Those to be repatriated were brought to the Sudan capital from Kosti port in the White Nile State, where they had been stranded for several months.

They are expected to assemble at the Khartoum airport beginning Saturday to prepare for the journey.

Planes will be dispatched on a daily basis to Juba, South Sudan's capital and to Bahr el-Ghazal in the Lakes region.

The Governor of White Nile State, Mr Yousef Al-Shonbli, said a deal was struck to transport the belongings of the returnees to the South Sudan border by road.

The UN estimates that there were about 500,000 South Sudanese still remaining in Sudan.