Some 600 West African migrants heading for Europe have been saved since April from the Niger desert after being abandoned by smugglers, the International Organization for Migration said Thursday.
The announcement came after the presumed deaths of dozens in the same area last week alone and hundreds more fatalities off the coast of Libya.
“IOM’s search and rescue operation saved 600 migrants stranded in the Sahara desert since April,” the group said on its website.
The last part of the operation saw 24 migrants lifted — one died later — last week and transferred to an IOM transit centre, but almost three times as many are presumed dead.
IOM said the survivors had been in a group of 75 migrants in three different vehicles which were abandoned by the smugglers as they headed north of Agadez in Niger for Libya.
“The authorities went back to where they had found the survivors to look for the other 51 who had been in the group, but they could not be found due to a sand storm,” the IOM said.
“The migrants were presumed dead and search missions resumed once the sand storm ended — the bodies have yet to be found.”
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