Algeria has abandoned 13,000 migrants in the Sahara Desert

(Image credit: DOMINIQUE FAGET/AFP/Getty Images)

published 25 June 2018

Algeria has abandoned thousands of migrants in the Sahara desert over the past year, forcing them to walk for miles on end until they reach neighboring Niger or Mali, The Associated Press reported Monday.

Migrants are reportedly being rounded up, put into trucks, dropped in the desert, and told to walk across the border, sometimes at gunpoint. The International Organization for Migration estimates that about 13,000 people have been forcibly expelled from Algeria this way since May 2017.

The number of migrants sent out of Algeria has spiked from 9,290 in 2016 to 14,446 over the past 10 months, reports AP. Officials are increasingly expelling migrants through the deadly Sahara, including pregnant women and children. Algerian police are leaving truckloads of people in scorching temperatures around 115 degrees Fahrenheit at points that are 18 miles from a water source, and migrants report that dozens in their groups succumbed to the inhospitable conditions.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/jacafc5zvs1692883516.jpg

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

"There were people who couldn't take it. They sat down and we left them. They were suffering too much," Aliou Kande, an 18-year-old from Senegal, told AP. Janet Kamara, a Liberian who was pregnant when she was stranded in the Sahara, said she spent several days walking before giving birth to a stillborn baby while in the desert. "Women were lying dead," she said. "Other people got missing in the desert because they didn't know the way." Read more at The Associated Press.

Explore More

Summer Meza has worked at The Week since 2018, serving as a staff writer, a news writer and currently the deputy editor. As a proud news generalist, she edits everything from political punditry and science news to personal finance advice and film reviews. Summer has previously written for Newsweek and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, covering national politics, transportation and the cannabis industry.

Subscribe to The Week

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

Sign up for Today's Best Articles in your inbox