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KHARTOUM. — About 300 illegal immigrants abandoned by people traffickers in the scorching Sudanese-Libyan desert, where several died, will be escorted to a Sudanese town from today, the army said.
Army spokesman Sawarmi Khaled Saad said the migrants, who were receiving medical care, would be taken by local Sudanese officials to the northern town of Dongola on the Nile River.

The town is hundreds of kilometres away and “the (road) trip will take about one and a half days,” after they leave a Sudanese army base near the Libyan border, he said yesterday.

A joint force of Sudanese and Libyan troops rescued the migrants —Sudanese, Eritreans, Ethiopians and others — after they were dumped in the border region.
A foreign ministry official said 10 had died, including six Sudanese, two Ethiopians and an Eritrean.

The nationality of the last victim was still unknown. The survivors were found hungry and thirsty, said the official, Abdelaziz Hassan Salih.
On Wednesday Saad said nine Sudanese migrants had died in the desert, which stretches from eastern Sudan up through Egypt to the Sinai Peninsula and is a major route for African migrants seeking a better life.

Thousands of Eritreans, in particular, make the journey each year to escape their authoritarian homeland.
“Some of them try to go through Egypt. Some of them try to go through Libya,” said a source familiar with the situation.

“They would try to cross the Mediterranean Sea via Libya.”
According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, an average of 600 refugees from Eritrea make their way to neighbouring Sudan each month.
It was not immediately clear, however, how many of the desert survivors were Eritrean. — AFP.