Venezuela migrants finally start the journey home

Hundreds of Venezuelan migrants left Colombia's capital on Sunday, hoping to return home after spending days stranded at a bus terminal.

Border closures because of the coronavirus pandemic had forced the migrants to camp out in a park in Bogota for weeks and then at the city's bus terminal for several days.

On Sunday, several government-issued buses took a group of some 150 migrants, including pregnant women and children, to Arauca state on the border between Colombia and Venezuela.

The migrants had left behind dire economic conditions in Venezuela with high hopes of making a living in neighbouring Colombia.

But they got caught in the middle of a world-wide pandemic that limited their ability to find work and forced them to return home.

According to the Colombian migration office, 86,711 Venezuelan migrants returned home since the start of the coronavirus outbreak.

Some 1.8 million Venezuelans still remain in Colombia.

Cecilio Zarraga, leader of a group of migrants, told The Associated Press that they had started collecting money to hire a vehicle that could bring them back to their home country.

A total of 395 people stayed in the makeshift camp for 38 days, before being moved to the Bogotá's bus terminal, where they stayed for two weeks.

Once the migrants arrive at the border it will then be up to the Venezuelan government to allow their citizens back in.