At least 49 individuals drowned when a ship carrying greater than 200 migrants sank off Yemen on a dangerous migration route from Africa, a U.N. company mentioned Tuesday.
“At least 49 migrants have died and 140 others remain missing after a boat” carrying 260 individuals capsized off the southern province of Shabwah on Monday, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) mentioned.
It mentioned 31 ladies and 6 kids have been amongst these confirmed useless, including that 115 Somali nationals and 145 Ethiopians have been initially on board the vessel earlier than it sank.
“Search and rescue operations are ongoing despite significant challenges due to a shortage of operational patrol boats,” the IOM mentioned.
The boat departed from Bossaso in Somalia at round 3 a.m. (12 a.m. GMT) Sunday amid a current rise in migrants from the Horn of Africa touring to Yemen, the U.N. company mentioned.
Each yr tens of hundreds of migrants from the Horn of Africa set off throughout the Red Sea in a bid to succeed in the oil-rich Gulf, escaping battle, pure disasters, or poor financial prospects.
In 2023 alone, the IOM noticed greater than 97,200 migrant arrivals in Yemen, it mentioned.
In April, two boats sank off the coast of Djibouti simply two weeks aside, leaving at the very least 62 useless, in line with the U.N. company.
The IOM mentioned Tuesday it had recorded 1,860 migrant deaths and disappearances alongside the migration route since 2014, together with 480 attributable to drowning.
The newest “tragedy is another reminder of the urgent need to work together to address urgent migration challenges and ensure the safety and security of migrants along migration routes,” mentioned company spokesperson Mohammedali Abunajela.
Dangerous journey
Those migrants who efficiently attain Yemen typically encounter additional threats to their security. The Arabian Peninsula’s poorest nation has been mired in civil battle for a decade.
Many are attempting to succeed in Saudi Arabia and different Gulf Arab nations the place they’ll work as laborers or home employees.
In August, Human Rights Watch accused Saudi border guards of killing “at least hundreds” of Ethiopians attempting to cross into the Gulf kingdom from Yemen between March 2022 and June 2023, utilizing explosive weapons in some instances.
Riyadh dismissed the group’s findings as “unfounded and not based on reliable sources.”
In a report final week, the Mixed Migration Centre mentioned hospitals in Yemen continued to obtain migrants injured in assaults alongside the border and that at the very least some killings continued.
The group, which goals to offer unbiased analysis on migration, mentioned it had “only been able to interview a small number of Ethiopian returnees” and that complete information was “extremely difficult to obtain.”
Therefore “it is impossible to say whether proportionally the extent of migrant killings has reduced compared to one year ago,” the group mentioned.
“However, even if central Saudi authorities would have instructed border guards to reduce or end the killings, MMC found that the killing of Ethiopian migrants by Saudi security officials has been continuing.”
The IOM mentioned final month that, regardless of the numerous risks of the migration route, the variety of migrants arriving in Yemen “tripled from 2021 to 2023, soaring from approximately 27,000 to over 90,000.”
Source: www.dailysabah.com