Algeria marches thousands of migrants into the blistering Sahara Desert, where many vanish without trace
Horrific stories tell of migrants forced at gunpoint to walk into the desert, where many die in the 48 Celsius heat, or wander lost in the wasteland and are never seen again
Algeria has abandoned more than 13,000 people in the Sahara Desert over the past 14 months, including pregnant women and children, expelling them without food or water and forcing them to walk, sometimes at gunpoint, under a blistering sun. Some never make it out alive.
The expelled migrants can be seen coming over the horizon by the hundreds, appearing at first as specks in the distance under temperatures of up to 48 degrees Celsius.
In Niger, where the majority head, the lucky ones limp across a desolate 15km no-man’s-land to the border village of Assamaka. Others wander for days before a UN rescue squad can find them. Untold numbers perish; nearly all of the more than two dozen survivors interviewed by The Associated Press told of people in their groups who simply vanished into the Sahara.
“Women were lying dead, men ... Other people got missing in the desert because they didn’t know the way,” said Janet Kamara, who was pregnant at the time. “Everybody was just on their own.”
In a voice almost devoid of feeling, she recalled at least two nights in the open before her group was rescued, but said she lost track of time.
There were people who couldn’t take it. They sat down and we left them. They were suffering too much
“I lost my son, my child,” said Kamara, who is Liberian.