First risky step in an Eritrean’s journey to Europe

A 20-year-old man from Eritrea is nursing serious leg wounds after being shot twice by people he says were Eritrean soldiers stationed near the border with Ethiopia.

”Even after I fell down, I could hear the bullets whizzing past me,” Weldab tells me from a clinic bed in Mai-Aini refugee camp in Ethiopia.

”I was lucky that I escaped. There were 10 of us in total; I don’t know what happened to the rest of my friends.”

This was the young man’s second attempt to leave his homeland.

He walked for most of the journey. Many of the refugees I met walked, mostly at night to avoid being detected.

Some told me they paid traffickers between $100 and $700 (£65 and £450) to show them the way. MORE, GO TO BBC…