The Niger authorities on Monday rescued 72 illegal migrants stranded in the scorching Sahara desert after their truck got a flat tyre. Mamane said the group, mostly women and children under the age of 10, were on their way back from Algeria. Upon hearing of last month's tragedy, in which 92 migrants perished stranded in the desert when their truck broke down, they had decided to leave their life of begging in southern Algeria and return home. One of the group's rescued women, Baraka Souley, said the migrants, from southern Niger, "were voluntarily returning to their homeland after those horrible deaths".