4 Prisoners, 7 Guards Die in Sudan Desert

Four prisoners and their seven guards died in northern Sudan last week after getting lost in the desert during a record heat wave, an official said Monday.

An official at the office of Ahmed Hassan Amin, deputy governor of the northern region, said that search teams looked for the 11 men for four days before finding their bodies last Thursday.

“Lack of water and excessive heat killed them,” the official said.

He said the four inmates and their seven guards were traveling from Berber, 200 miles north of Khartoum, to another town when they got lost in the desert.

Temperatures in northern Sudan reached as high as 122 degrees in the past week, the hottest it has been in 30 years, the government’s meteorological department says.