YAOUNDE, Cameroon

After waiting for several days at the border, nearly 1,000 Chadian students in Cameroon returned to their country on Thursday, an official told Anadolu Agency.

"Nearly 1,000 Chadian students who are pursuing higher education in Cameroon, returned to Chad on Thursday.

"They had expressed their willingness to return to Chad following the coronavirus pandemic," Chad’s Ambassador to Cameroon Djiddi Bichara Hassan said.

According to the students, their return to Chad was not easy because of the closure of the border between the two countries.

“We spent three days in the open air on the Ngueli Bridge,'' which connects Ndjamena, the capital of Chad, to Kousseri, a town in the far north of Cameroon.

"Other students went to Touboro in northern Cameroon and spent more than a week with their luggage at the border," Ahmat Tahir, president of Chadian Students Association in Yaounde, told Anadolu Agency.

The Chadian Presidency urged all ''citizens who returned without health check and in an illegal manner without going through authorized channels at the borders of the country with neighboring countries to immediately go to Farcha provincial hospital for screening."

Chad recorded its first case of coronavirus last week and two other cases were detected this week.

A number of measures have been taken to prevent the spread of COVID-19, such as the closure of land borders.

Cameroon has more than 80 cases, two deaths and two recoveries, according to the country's Public Health Ministry.