At least 68 migrants who died and 74 missing after the boat capsizes off the coast of Yemen Coast
CAIRO – A boat capsized on Sunday in the waters off the Yemen coast, killing 68 African dead and 74 other missing persons, said the United Nations Migration Agency.
The tragedy was the last in a series of shipwrecks off Yemen who killed hundreds of African migrants in the hope of reaching the rich Arab countries in the Gulf.
The ship, with 154 Ethiopian migrants on board, sank off the southern province of Abyan on Sunday, Abdusattor Esoev, head of the International Migration Organization in Yemen, the Associated Press told.
He said that the bodies of 54 migrants were washed in the Khanfar district, and 14 others were found dead and taken to a morgue at the hospital in Zinjibar, the provincial capital of Abyan on the southern coast of Yemen.
Only 12 migrants survived the sinking, and the others were missing and presumed dead, said Esoev.
Despite more than a decade of civil war, Yemen is a major path for East African migrants and the Horn of Africa trying to reach the Arab Gulf countries to work. Migrants are taken by smugglers on often dangerous and overcrowded boats across the Red Sea or the Gulf of Aden.
Hundreds of migrants have died or disappeared in the shipwreck in Yemen in recent months, especially in March, when two migrants died and 186 other people disappeared after four boats capsized Yemen and Djibouti, according to the OIM.
