Niger says 92 migrants found dead in Sahara after attempted crossing

Nation to mourn puzzling tragedy for three days

Rescuers have found the bodies of 92 migrants, most of them women and children, strewn across the Sahara desert in northern Niger after their vehicles broke down and they died of thirst, authorities said on Thursday.

Rescue worker Almoustapha Alhacen said the bodies of 52 children, 33 women and seven men were found close to the Algerian border, some 160 km north of the mining town of Arlit in northern Niger.

Many of the victims, all believed to be from Niger, were in an advanced state of decomposition and had been partly devoured by animals, probably jackals, he said.

Niger's government declared three days of national mourning starting on Friday and said it would launch a crackdown on the networks ferrying migrants across the Sahara.

Northern Niger lies on a major corridor for illegal migration and people-trafficking from sub-Saharan African into north Africa and across the Mediterranean into Europe.

Most of those who make the perilous journey on ancient open-topped trucks are young African men in search of work. Rescuers said the doomed convoy was puzzling.

"It's the first time I've seen anything like it," Alhacen said. "It is hard to understand what these women and children were doing there."

Rescuers found many small writing slates among the luggage, suggesting the children may have been students in a Quranic school being taken to Algeria, perhaps to beg, Alhacen said.

Alhacen said 19 of the group had reached Algeria by foot and were repatriated to Niger by authorities there. Two survived after walking dozens of kilometers across the burning desert back to Arlit.

The bodies of 87 of the victims were buried on Wednesday in accordance with Islamic custom, he said.

'Transport which kills'

The migrants had set off in two trucks from Arlit toward Tamanrasset in Algeria some time between late September or early October, officials said.

After one truck broke down, the second turned back to look for help but was stranded and the passengers tried to return by foot. It was weeks before authorities were alerted and able to reach the site.

"Sometimes in the vast desert, there are tragedies like this which are never even discovered," government spokesman Marou Amadou told state television.

"So the government has instructed administrative authorities and defense forces to put an end to this transport which kills."

Authorities said all the passengers came from the region of Kantche in southern Niger, 700 km east of the capital Niamey.

Many people emigrate to flee poverty in Niger, ranked by the United Nations as the least developed country on earth.

Reuters

(China Daily 11/02/2013 page7)