Rescuers find 87 dead migrants in Niger desert

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Soldiers and rescuers have found badly decomposed bodies of 87 migrants in northern Niger, who died while crossing the Sahara on their way to Europe, rescue workers said on Thursday.
The workers said that the migrants, most of them women and children, died of thirst in the desert after their vehicles broke down near Niger’s border with Algeria.
``There was a dead woman holding her baby,’’ rescue volunteer Al Moustapha Alhacen said.
The migrants had left Arlit, 150 Km south of the Niger-Algeria border in two trucks at the end of September, according to Alhacen.
A Spokesperson of Niger’s army confirmed the number of dead, noting that the corpses included 32 women and 48 children.
The bodies were buried on Wednesday in Assamakka, a small desert town in northern Niger near a main border crossing with Algeria.
Three days earlier, soldiers found five bodies in the same area, believed to be from the same two-vehicle convoy.
Poverty-stricken Niger forms part of a major migrant route between West Africa and Europe.

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