Ethiopia on Saturday started repatriating Eritrean prisoners of war (POWs), on the first direct flight between the Horn of Africa nations' capitals since the end of a bloody border conflict in June.
The first group to leave, on a jet chartered by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), consisted of 97 soldiers who had been wounded in the two-year war for disputed territory or were sick.
Dozens of the Eritrean troops were on crutches when they boarded the Boeing 727 leased by the Turkish company Memphis Air, and one was on a stretcher, an AFP correspondent saw at Addis Ababa's international airport.
They were brought to the airport on two coaches with a police escort.
The plane took off for Asmara at 9:40 am (0640 GMT), making a humanitarian flight the first official one from Addis Ababa since both countries closed their air space after the war.
"This is a very positive step," ICRC delegate in Ethiopia Alain Aeschlimann told AFP. "We hope we can go on with the repatriation of all the POWs".
Tens of thousands of soldiers on both sides died in pitched battles during the war that broke out between Ethiopia and its former Red Sea province in May 1988.
The ICRC said it has counted 2,600 Eritrean prisoners in Ethiopia and 1,000 Ethiopian prisoners in Eritrea but has stressed this was not the total number of prisoners of war.
The two countries kept to a cease-fire they reached in June this year, but a full peace agreement, brokered mainly by the Organization of African Unity (OAU) and the United States, was not signed until December 12.
The deal provided for the exchange of POWs, the deployment of a UN buffer force on the border, compensation arrangements and the delineation by UN cartographers of the ill-defined frontier inherited from colonial times.
In all, the ICRC plans to repatriate between 700 and 750 POWs during the weekend.
The operation had been due to start on Friday, but was delayed because of engine trouble with the plane -- ADDIS ABABA (AFP)
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