Deadly Algerian migrant evictions resume in desert, UN says Manila Bulletin News

PARIS – Algeria's government has resumed expelling migrants into the Sahara Desert to die, leaving 391 people to wander through some of the world's most hostile terrain in the middle of summer, a US migration official said Saturday.

The migrants, from 16 different countries, were abandoned to the border with Niger, according to a tweet from Giuseppe Loprete, the head of the UN's International Organization for Migration in Niger.

The Associated Press reported last month that Algeria has left more than 13,000 migrants in the desert of Niger and Mali since May 2017, forcing them to walk or die under searing heat,

For several weeks after the AP report came out , the evictions appeared to have been suspended. IOM in Mali said the secret secretive Algerian government seemed to be trying to make an effort to communicate the movement of migrants.

IOM has been forced to migrate to the jail in detention centers.

IOM has been forced to find the migrants as they stumble through the desert, and many told the AP some of their companions died along the way.

Algeria has an agreement with the Niger government to transport its citizens by convoy directly to the city of Agadez. Aim of migrants from other countries who have been rounded up by 15 kilometers of the world's most hostile terrain, where summer temperatures reach well above 40 C (104 F).

The African Union, many of the members of the government counted among the expelled migrants, has asked that Algeria stop abandoning people to die in the desert. The United Nations has also condemned the practice

Algeria's opaque government, however, has refused to acknowledge it. Soon after the AP report and a Human Rights Watch report on the expulsion of expatriates in the United States But they were not allowed to travel beyond the detention centers where they are held before expulsion.