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 dry heat, emergency services said on Wednesday (June 29).
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The local branch of Libya’s “Aid and Emergency Service” in the city of Kufra in the country’s far southeast said in a statement that one of their teams “recovered 20 bodies that were found in the desert after their car broke down.” They all died of thirst. “The Chadian-originated vehicle was found 310 km south of Kufra and 120 km from the Chadian-Libyan border,” the statement said. The emergency services posted a video on its Facebook page showing the remains in a state of decomposition lying on the ocher sand next to their pickup.
In this arid area of the Libyan desert with a very sparse population, temperatures can exceed 40 degrees in summer. The desert south of Libya, a country plunged into chaos since the fall of Muammar Gaddafi’s regime in 2011, has become a hotspot for smuggling goods and illegal immigration in recent years. Thousands of migrants cross Libya’s porous borders from Sudan, Niger and Chad each year to work in that country or attempt to cross the Mediterranean to Europe. Cases of migrants missing or found dead in the middle of the desert are common.
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