The Libyan Ambulance and Emergency Service announced on Wednesday that 20 bodies had been recovered from a parked vehicle south of the city of Kufra, southeast of Libya, towards the border with Chad.
“It is likely that the car stopped due to a technical problem in the middle of the desert,” Osama Ali, a spokesman for the ambulance and emergency services, said in a press statement, indicating that there were no accidents with the car.
The spokesman did not specify the nationality or age of the dead, and said that the prosecutor’s office and the Judicial Control Department of the Kufra Police Station were monitoring the recovery process, explaining that this was the third incident this year in Libya. desert.
Much of the south of Libya is located in Africa’s Sahara desert, which is the largest in the world and is a transit corridor for African migrants seeking work in Libya or wishing to cross the sea illegally to European shores.
The networks that smuggle migrants across the border use deserted 4×4 vehicles capable of traversing the sand. According to some migrants’ past claims, gang members routinely pack migrants into the bags of vehicles following them in an exaggerated manner in order to reduce the cost of transporting one person on normally risky trips. cars sink in the sand, come to a halt, or run out of water, food, or fuel.
