MOSCOW (Sputnik) – According to the BBC, citing Interior Minister Bazoum Mohamed, the incident happened near the small desert town of Assamakka. The migrants died of thirst between June 6 and 12, having been abandoned by their smuggler. Twenty of them were children.
The region lies on a major migrant route between sub-Saharan Africa and Europe, with some 120,000 people crossing it in 2015, according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM).
Many EU member countries have faced a large-scale migrant crisis recently, with tens of thousands of refugees risking a journey across the Mediterranean to flee violence in North Africa and the Middle East.