Algeria abandons 13,000 migrants in Sahara

ASSAMAKA, June 25 (AP): Algeria has abandoned more than 13,000 people in the Sahara Desert over the past 14 months.

They are including pregnant women and children, expelling them without food or water and forcing them to walk, sometimes at gunpoint, under a blistering sun.

Some never make it out alive.

The expelled migrants can be seen coming over the horizon by the hundreds, appearing at first as specks in the distance under temperatures of up to 48 degrees Celsius (118 degrees Fahrenheit).

In Niger, where the majority head, the lucky ones limp across a desolate 15-kilometer no-man's-land to the border village of Assamaka. Others wander for days before a UN rescue squad can find them.

Untold numbers perish; nearly all of the more than two dozen survivours interviewed by the news agency told people in their groups who simply vanished into the Sahara.