Aug. 4 (UPI) — Dozens of migrants were killed off the coast of Yemen after their vessel went down in the Gulf of Aden in bad weather.
At least 68 people died and many more are missing after the boat capsized and sank late Sunday with 157 mostly Ethiopian nationals on board off the southern province of Abyan, the International Organization for Migration said.
The IOM’s Yemen chief, Abdusattor Esoev, said a major search and rescue operation by provincial authorities had plucked 12 survivors from the sea.
Abyan officials said a large number of bodies had washed up on the coast of the province. They said the vessel was overloaded.
“The bodies of the dead and at least a dozen survivors, including two Yemeni smugglers, were taken to hospitals in Abyan,” Abdul Kader Bajamel, a health official in the Abyan town of Zinjibar, told The New York Times.
“Because the hospital’s morgues could not accommodate this large number of bodies, and to avoid an environmental crisis, the governor of Abyan ordered the immediate burial of the dead and formed an emergency committee to search for the missing.”
A health official in Khanfar district said the remains of one migrant had been brought to the hospital there and doctors had treated 11 survivors, all of whom had since been discharged.
Calling for more protection for migrants and safe legal routes to prevent them falling into the hands of people-smuggling gangs, Esoev said the stricken boat was making a perilous journey in waters routinely used by smugglers.
“What we are advocating for all member states is to enhance their regular pathways so people can take legal ways in order to migrate, instead of being trapped or deceived by smugglers and taking those dangerous journeys,” he said.
IOM said the so-called Eastern Route moving migrants from countries in the Horn of Africa, including Ethiopia, Eritrea and Somalia, to Gulf countries, for which Yemen is the gateway, was one of “busiest and riskiest migration routes in the world,” with 60,000 making the journey last year.
Once migrants reach Yemen, they try to cross into Saudi Arabia to find employment and go underground in a huge grey economy in the oil-rich Gulf states.
More than 180 migrants were killed in March after two vessels sank in the Red Sea off the coastal town of Dhubab in western Yemen. The only survivors were two members of the crew.
IOM said it had documented the deaths or disappearance of more than 3,400 migrants undertaking the Eastern Route since 2014, of whom 1,400 had drowned.
Yemen is in the midst of a decade-long internal conflict that has seen the country carved up among several factions, notably Iran-backed Houthi rebels who seized control from the internationally recognized government, which in turn was, and continues to be, backed by a Saudi-led, U.S.-backed military coalition trying to restore it to power.
The fighting triggered one of the worst of the world’s worst humanitarian crises, with almost 20 million people in need of food, medical and other assistance, more than half of them children, and more than 4.5 million people internally displaced, according to UNICEF.