Smugglers abandon 300 and 10 die in torrid desert
Print Edition
ALAADEEN put himself in the hands of people smugglers to take him somewhere better than impoverished eastern Sudan but he never made it.
The 22-year-old Sudanese was among 10 illegal immigrants who died when traffickers abandoned their group of about 300 in the scorching desert on the Sudanese-Libyan border, a relative in Alaadeen’s hometown of Kassala said by telephone yesterday.
“He was looking for a better life,” said the relative who asked not to be named. “Some people with him told us that he had died.”
Alaadeen, whose full name the relative declined to reveal, was the son of a trader doing business on the Sudanese-Eritrean border near Kassala, he said.
Yesterday Al-Sudani newspaper said the young man and several other Sudanese were among the 10 victims.
The foreign ministry said the dead also included two Ethiopians, an Eritrean, and a victim whose nationality was unknown.
The relative said Alaadeen had gone with the traffickers of his own accord.
“He was taken by smugglers from the Kassala area to Khartoum before going on to Dongola,” a Nile River town about 500 kilometers northwest of the capital, he said.
Libya’s border is more than a day’s drive from there.
The 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 go to 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. “They would try to cross the Mediterranean Sea via Libya.”
Sudanese officials disclosed the rescue of the illegal migrants on Wednesday, saying they were dumped in the border region’s scorching desert, where 10 died.
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