PARIS, April 20 (Xinhua) -- About 100 detainees will be released from the U.S. detention center in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, a senior U.S. official said here Thursday.

    "Around 100 prisoners at Guantanamo are ready to leave, once their home countries are ready to receive them," said State Department official Sandra Hodgkinson at the U.S Embassy in Paris.

    "It takes time to secure an agreement from their countries of origin: we want assurances that they will be treated humanely and also that they will be kept under watch," said the deputy head of the State Department's war crimes office.

    "Where do they go when they are released? In the case of Afghans, for example, do they go back to Afghanistan? But President (Hamid) Karzai doesn't want them," she said.

    She said that about 250 prisoners had been released from the U.S. naval base of Guantanamo in Cuba and that around 15 had returned to the battlefield.

    Since 2002, some 750 people, most of them captured in Afghanistan, have been held in Guantanamo. Only 10 of the detainees have been formally charged so far. Enditem