In the middle of a desert wasteland on the Libyan-Tunisian border. That is where the Tunisian authorities would have abandoned to a new group of migrants sub-Saharan Africans, who were forced to walking for hours without water and foodunder a scorching sun, until the Libyan border guard rescued them last weekend.

Between tears, exhausted and pregnant, the Sudanese nurse Tafaul Omar has told Reuters how they were arrested and abandoned in the border area with Libya, a practice that the Tunisian government denies, despite the fact that it is not the first time that the patrols are at migrants abandoned and even dead in the desert.

“It was just a horrible feeling walk in the middle of nowhere“, has recounted the young woman, who she feared for her baby’s life unborn during that nightmarish journey through the desert. Along with her, 14 other men and women from various African countries -Sudan, Senegal, Ghana and Mali- found themselves abandoned to her fate.

Tafaul Omar fled with her husband, Yaseen Adam, from their home in Khartoum after the outbreak of the armed conflict in sudan last April, in which his father died. According to his account, they were living in Tunisia when the police arrested them and took them to the border together with other migrants: the agents they beat up the men and took all the phones from them mobiles, before leaving them stranded in the desert.

Kufi Mousa and his wife, Blessing David, also pregnant, are part of the same group of rescued migrants. His intention was to reach Europe, but they have not raised enough money, he told Reuters: “I have lost hope, I just want to return to Ghana. They expelled my wife and me and they let us walk in the desert facing terrible conditions“, he lamented.

The migrants themselves, the Libyan authorities and human rights groups accuse Tunisia of expelling migrants and leaving them abandoned in the middle of the desert, but the government denies it. at least 18 peopleaccording to the Efe agency, have passed away near the Libyan border in recent days after being deported from the country, which precisely just signed an immigration agreement with the European Unionas reported by humanitarian organizations.

Recently the image of a mother and her young daughter found dead in the desert between Tunisia and Libya of thirst and hunger. According to the International Organization for Migration (IOM), some 300 people have been assisted by United Nations agencies and the Libyan authorities in the area, but some 350 migrants remain stranded in the border area.