On a hospital bed in Niger, a 96-year-old woman lay motionless attached to a drip - one of thousands of possible victims of West Africa's worst heatwave in living memory, which a report said on Thursday was linked to fossil fuel-driven climate change.

A brutal, deadly stretch of heat in West Africa would not have been possible without human-caused climate change, a new report has found.

The recent deadly heat in West Africa is driven by human activities, including the burning of fossil fuels, particularly in the wealthy Northern Hemisphere, according to an international report.

Climate change contributed to an unusually intense heat wave that hit West Africa’s Sahel region this month, with numerous deaths reported in at least two countries, according to a study by the World Weather Attribution.

STORY: On a hospital bed in Niger, a 96-year-old woman lies motionless, attached to a drip.She is one of possibly thousands of victims of West Africa's worst heatwave in living memory.That extreme weather was a once in a 200-year event,

A deadly heatwave in West Africa and the Sahel was “impossible” without human-induced climate change, scientists say.Temperatures soared above 48C in Mali last month with one hospital linking hundreds of deaths to the extreme heat.

According to research by the World Weather Attribution (WWA), released on Thursday (April 18), "human-induced" climate change caused the heatwave that swept over Africa's Sahel area in early April and claimed multiple lives.

The West African nations of Mali and Burkina Faso experienced an exceptional heatwave from 1 April until 5 April, with soaring temperatures above 45 degrees Celsius triggering a large number of deaths