http://english.al-akhbar.com/node/19617
Officials rescue 300 migrants left for dead in Sudanese-Libyan desert
Published Thursday, May 1, 2014
Ten migrants have died among some 300 abandoned by smugglers in the
scorching Sudanese-Libyan desert, with the others in poor condition,
Sudanese officials said Wednesday.
"They are hungry and thirsty," Abdelaziz Hassan Salih, a senior official of
Sudan's foreign ministry, told the official SUNA news agency.
A human trafficking gang "ordered them to get down from their vehicles",
Salih said. Traffickers often abandon undocumented migrants after receiving
their fees.
"They only care about money," Salih said.
The dead included six Sudanese, two Ethiopians, an Eritrean, and a victim
whose nationality is unknown, he added.
Sudan's army spokesman Sawarmi Khaled Saad earlier told AFP that nine
Sudanese had died.
"They were on their way to Libya as illegal immigrants," he said.
"The smugglers left them in the desert... on the border between Sudan and
Libya," he said.
The survivors are from various nationalities and include Ethiopians,
Eritreans, Pakistanis and Bangladeshis, Saad said.
Sudanese and Libyan troops rescued the migrants in a joint operation, Saad
said in a statement posted on the defense ministry's website.
In all, 319 people had been abandoned in the desert, he said.
"They are getting treatment and being transferred to Dongola," a town about
500 kilometers northwest of Khartoum, he added.
Comments by the foreign ministry's Salih suggested the victims were still
on the Libyan side of the frontier.
He said Sudan's consul in al-Kufrah, Libya, coordinated quickly with Libyan
authorities and a joint force of Sudanese and Libyan troops on the border.
The loosely governed desert region stretching from eastern Sudan up through
Egypt to the Sinai Peninsula is a major route for African migrants seeking
a better life.
Thousands of Eritreans make the journey each year. Many head for Israel
while others try to get to Europe.
"Some of them try to go through Egypt. Some of them try to go through
Libya," said a source familiar with the situation.
"They would try to cross the Mediterranean Sea via Libya."
Twelve Sudanese were killed in a car crash last June trying to evade Libyan
police and enter the country illegally after travelling with human
traffickers, Sudanese officials said.
Economic migrants or refugees often rely on smugglers.
More than 350 migrants, mainly from Eritrea, died in an October shipwreck
off the Italian island of Lampedusa as they tried to reach Europe.
According to official data, some 600 refugees from authoritarian Eritrea
alone make their way to neighboring Sudan each month.
"The majority of them want to continue onwards," the source said.
Sudan itself ranks near the bottom of the UN's Human Development Index of
health, education and income. Wars and poverty have left more than six
million people needing humanitarian assistance in the country.
Human Rights Watch accused Egyptian and Sudanese security officers in
February of colluding with traffickers, saying they were holding Eritrean
migrants for ransom and torturing them.
Amnesty International said last year that Eritrean refugees kidnapped in
Sudan were raped, beaten, chained up and sometimes killed after being
forcibly transported to Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, where they are held for
ransom.
The London-based watchdog said it received "numerous reports" since 2011
that residents of the Shagarab refugee camp in Sudan's Kassala state, near
the Eritrean border, had been abducted.
Sudanese officials in the border region with Eritrea have appealed for
European Union help to combat human trafficking.
Migratory pressure pushing across the Mediterranean "is far from
diminishing, it is increasing," said a statement from foreign ministers
from Cyprus, France, Greece, Italy, Malta, Portugal and Spain after an
informal meeting in the Spanish port of Alicante in April.
*(AFP, Al-Akhbar)*
Received on Thu May 01 2014 - 08:12:52 EDT