Sylvie Claire / June 30, 2022
Twenty people were found dead of thirst in the middle of the Libyan desert, near the border with Chad, after their vehicle broke down in the arid heat, emergency services said Wednesday.
The local branch of the Libyan rescue and emergency service in the city of Kufra, in the far southeast of the country, said in a statement that one of its teams had recovered 20 bodies found in the desert after their car broke down.
They all died of thirst. The vehicle, coming from Chad, was found 310 km south of Kufra and 120 km from the Chad-Libya border, the statement said.
In this arid area of the Libyan desert with a very small population, temperatures can exceed 40 degrees in summer. The desert south of Libya, a country plunged into chaos since the fall of the regime of Muammar Gaddafi in 2011, has become in recent years a mecca for smuggling of goods and illegal immigration.
Thousands of migrants cross Libya's porous borders from Sudan, Niger and Chad each year to work in that country or to attempt the Mediterranean crossing to Europe. Cases of migrants disappearing or being found dead in the desert are frequent.