News from Assamakka
The road across Algeria and Niger has been closed for number of years but those of you who have been to Assamakka cannot read these news without feeling dismay, anger, and heartbreak.
In the past couple of years, thousands of migrants have been arrested by the Algerian police, driven back south, dumped in the desert, and ordered at gun point to walk straight ahead toward Niger. No water, no money, no cell phone. Some were abandoned at the non-existing border line about 15 km north of Assamakka, others just off the In Guezzam border post (the circular building in the middle of nowhere) another 10 km further north.
https://apnews.com/9ca5592217aa4acd836b9ee091ebfc20
And for those who haven’t been, you can zoom the satellite view with Google or Apple maps. It’s likely the smallest place in the world that can be looked up by name on both these maps: literally a dozen “buildings” (the 1-square room no-door kind of building) floating over the deep sand. Imagine a group of hundreds of migrants coming out of the desert to this place that has only half a well for water.
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