Niger soldiers find 87 bodies from failed Sahara crossing

Soldiers and rescuers found the badly decomposed bodies of 87 migrants in northern Niger who died while crossing the Sahara on their way to Europe, rescue workers saidy.

The migrants, most of them women and children, died of thirst in the desert after their vehicles broke down near Niger's border with Algeria.

"There was a dead woman holding her baby," rescue volunteer Al Moustapha Alhacen told dpa.

The migrants had left Arlit, 150 kilometres south of the Niger-Algeria border, in two trucks at the end of September, according to Alhacen.

A spokesperson of Niger's army confirmed the number of dead, noting the corpses included 32 women and 48 children.

The bodies were buried on Wednesday in Assamakka, a small desert town in northern Niger near a main border crossing with Algeria.

Three days earlier, soldiers found five bodies in the same area, believed to have come from the same two-vehicle convoy.

Poverty-stricken Niger forms part of a major migrant route between West Africa and Europe.