23:34, 30 November 2006

Eighty-nine refugees have returned from Georgia to Chechnya

A total of 89 Chechen refugees who fled to the Akhmetovskiy District of Georgia at the very start of 1999 military actions have come back home from there.

This has become known from a source in the Republic's Department of Migration Service. Earlier, it was reported that 95 forced migrants were going to come back to Chechnya.

"A group of forced migrants from Chechnya in the number of 89 persons has arrived to their homeland. They all lived in the Akhmetovskiy District of Georgia. Mainly, these are people who had lived, before the start of military actions in the Republic, in the Itum-Kalinskiy District, which is bordering on Georgia, and its neighbouring Shatoiskiy District," the source added.

"Totally, in the period from 2003 till today the Migration Service has returned more than 500 persons from Georgia back to the Republic. According to our data, a total of about thirty-five hundred Chechen refugees resided in the territory of Georgia. About two thousand of them have returned to homeland by their own, and some of them left for European countries," the Migration Service employee said.

Author: Sultan Abubakarov, CK correspondent