Aug 10, 1998 Eastern
By Alexander Last
DEKAMHARE, Eritrea, Aug 10 (Reuters) - Hundreds of Eritreans and Ethiopians expelled in a series of tit-for-tat deportations in a border row between the African neighbours traded accusations of ill-treatment from their native soil on Monday.
Eritrean officials said the arrival on Sunday of a thousand Eritreans in the southern town of Dekamhare brought to more than 14,000 the number of people deported from Ethiopia since the frontier dispute escalated into an armed conflict in May.
Meanwhile in Addis Ababa, 163 Ethiopian labourers spent their first full day at home after being allowed to leave the Red Sea port of Assab, in Eritrea, and surviving a 28-hour sea journey to the port of Djibouti in a Somali dhow.
They said thousands of Ethiopians still in Assab were starving because they had no source of income but were unable to leave.
The port was used for most of landlocked Ethiopia's export and import trade but no Ethiopian traffic has moved through since May.
``Most of the Ethiopians at Assab are daily labourers who lived from hand to mouth,'' a spokesman for the deportees told reporters.
``The Ethiopians are not allowed to work and also have been refused permits to leave for their country by the Eritrean authorities and are dying at rate of some 30 a day becuse they have nothing to eat,'' he said.
Kiros Shifera, who used to work at a salt mine in Assab, said he saw 50 Ethiopian workers die of asphixiation after they were locked in cargo containers.
Kiros said the men, who were working as labourers at the port, had demanded to be allowed to leave. They were forcibly shepherded into a cargo container and locked inside, he said.
The Eritrean deportees in Dekamhare, 40 km (25 miles) from the capital Asmara, told reporters they were ordered to walk home after being dropped outside the Ethiopian town of Adigrat near the border.
They said shots were fired behind them as they trekked the 20 km (12 miles) to the Eritrean lines.
The Eritrean Relief and Refugee Commission said the deportees arrived in the sensitive front-line area of Zalambessa in the early hours of Friday.
One elderly deportee, Kiflamaraim, a retired banker, said he had lived in Ethiopia for 45 years. He said he had been told he was being expelled because his mother and father had Eritrean blood.
``But I am Ethiopian,'' he said. ``I have an Ethiopian passport.''
Eritrea has alleged that more than 600 of its nationals were dumped by Ethiopian officials last month in no-man's land separating the opposing armies at the southern front near Assab.
Neither side's accusations could be independently verified.
The border dispute between Ethiopia and Eritrea degenerated into violence in May with fighting on three fronts involving aircraft and thousands of troops, though there has been no significant fighting since mid-June.
Both sides accused the other of violating their territory.
The two states were one until Eritrea peacefully gained independence after a 1993 referendum, two years after rebels from both entities jointly overthrew Ethiopia's Marxist dictator Mengistu Haile Mariam.
The United States has urged both sides to allow international agencies full access to prisoners of war and to facilitate the repatriation of those who want to return home.