(DPA) Harare — Zimbabwean police have arrested 51 Ethiopian nationals believed to have escaped from a refugee camp in the capital, reports said Friday. The 51 were arrested on board a bus bound for Zimbabwe’s border with neighbouring South Africa, the official Herald daily said.

“We sent them back to their refugee camp in Harare,” Lancelot Matange, a senior police officer in southern Zimbabwe, was quoted as saying.

None of the Ethiopians had passports, the paper said. Ethiopian refugees often cross Zimbabwe as they try to illegally enter South Africa.

In January 23 Ethiopians were arrested in Zimbabwe’s border town of Beitbridge. They were also bound for South Africa. Two years ago, up to 300 Somali and Ethiopian refugees were reported to have escaped from holding camps in Zimbabwe.

A growing number of desperate Zimbabweans also make the hazardous journey across the Limpopo River into South Africa to escape food shortages and poverty back home.