International Courant
Libyan border guards have rescued dozens of refugees and migrants left within the desert by Tunisian authorities with out water or meals, and their numbers are “rising,” a Libyan officer says.
“The variety of migrants continues to rise on daily basis,” Mohamad Abou Snenah, a member of a border patrol unit, instructed the Agence France-Presse information company (AFP) on Sunday that it had rescued “50 to 70 migrants”.
“We offer them with medical care, first help, given the journey they’ve made via the desert.”
Al Jazeera’s Malik Traina reported on Monday that the variety of refugees and migrants rescued by Libyan forces with the assistance of the United Nations has risen to 191.
Lots of of sub-Saharan black Africans have been forcibly moved into the desert and hostile areas bordering Libya and Algeria following racial unrest in early July in Sfax, Tunisia’s second-largest metropolis.
Traina, reporting from Misrata, Libya, mentioned the refugees and migrants have been half of a bigger group pushed out of Sfax after riots.
The group was in an uninhabited space close to al-Assah, a city close to the Tunisia-Libya border, practically 150 km west of Tripoli.
“They took these individuals to the desert… with no water, no meals and tried to push them into Libyan territory with tear fuel,” Traina mentioned.
Many have been left within the “scorching desert” for days, he mentioned. For the reason that starting of those deportations, about 1,200 individuals have been expelled.
“Once we went to go to the positioning, … we discovered about 700 to 800 migrants at that location,” Traina mentioned. “Evidently there may very well be a number of teams alongside the desert within the Tunisia-Libya border, and they’re begging for assist, for water, meals and shelter.”
Exhausted and dehydrated
An AFP crew on the border reported seeing refugees visibly exhausted and dehydrated, sitting or mendacity on the sand and utilizing bushes to defend themselves from the scorching summer time warmth, which topped 40C (104F).
In response to a press release from the Libyan Inside Ministry, a crew from the UN’s Worldwide Group for Migration (IOM) offered them with meals, clothes and short-term housing, in addition to first help for the injured.
In a video posted by the ministry, two males from Nigeria mentioned they have been crushed up by Tunisian troopers and brought to a desert space with others earlier than being instructed to enter Libya.
One other man mentioned Tunisian troopers took their passports and burned them earlier than taking 35 individuals in a single automobile to the border space with Libya.
He mentioned they spent two days within the desert earlier than Libyan border guards discovered them.
In a shelter, teams of ladies and kids, together with toddlers, lay on mattresses and ate yogurt.
Ivorian Abou Kouni, who arrived in Tunisia seven years in the past, mentioned he was apprehended on the street final week and placed on a truck along with his spouse.
He mentioned he had been hit within the torso and again and that cops had threatened to kill him.
The Tunisian police, in response to Abou Kouni, “mentioned they might throw us in Libya” and instructed him, “We do not want you in Tunisia.”
‘Deported’
Ibrahim, a Congolese man who used to dwell within the Tunisian city of Zarzis, mentioned he was stopped on the road on his method again from work.
“They dropped us within the desert,” he mentioned. “We have been within the desert for days. We noticed a shepherd who gave us bread and water.”
Lots of of refugees and migrants fled or have been pressured to go away Tunisian Sfax after racial tensions flared following the July 3 killing of a Tunisian man in an altercation between locals and sub-Saharan black Africans.
The port of Sfax is a degree of departure for a lot of refugees from impoverished and violence-torn international locations looking for a greater life in Europe by making the perilous crossing of the Mediterranean Sea, typically in makeshift boats.
In Libya, human traffickers have lengthy profited from the chaos for the reason that overthrow of strongman Muammar Gaddafi in 2011, and the nation has been accused of abusing refugees.
Tunisian rights teams mentioned on Friday that 100 to 150 individuals, together with ladies and kids, are nonetheless trapped on the Libyan border.
The Tunisian Pink Crescent mentioned it has hosted greater than 600 individuals transferred since July 3 to the militarized zone of Ras Jedir, the principle border crossing with Libya, north of al-Assah on the Mediterranean coast.
About 165 refugees left behind close to the border with Algeria have been picked up in western Tunisia close to the Algerian border, the Tunisian Discussion board for Financial and Social Rights mentioned on Friday, with out specifying who or the place they have been taken.
Libyan authorities save refugees in desert close to Tunisia | Refugee information
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