45 people died of thirst including babies, in Sahara Desert..

45 people died of thirst including women and babies,the survivors say 45 people have died of thirst  after their vehicle broke down in the desert of northern Niger
, local officials said Thursday.

“The number of people who died in the desert is 45 for now,” said Rhissa Feltou,  a remote town on the edge of the Sahara that has become the smuggling capital of Africa.

The Red Cross, which said “at least 45 people have died”, has dispatched a team to the site “to gather information” on the circumstances.

In early May, eight migrants from Niger, five of them children, were found dead in the desert while on their way to Algeria.

Also in May, soldiers on patrol in northern Niger rescued around 45 people from various west African countries who had been abandoned in the desert by people-smugglers they had paid to get to Libya.

The group included people from The Gambia, Nigeria, Guinea, Senegal and Niger, all of them hoping to reach the Libyan coast and from there cross the Mediterranean to Europe.

Libya has long struggled to control its 5,000 kilometres (3,000 miles) of southern borders with Sudan, Chad and Niger, even before the 2011 uprising that toppled dictator Moamer Kadhafi.

In the chaos that followed, traffickers stepped up their business, with tens of thousands of people each year making the perilous crossing to Italy just some 300 kilometres away.
So far no-one has visited the site to identify the bodies, mr Taher added.