At least 54 migrants died after a boat carrying around 150 people sank off Yemen’s southern coast on Sunday, according to health officials. Dozens of people are still missing.
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The boat went down in the Arabian Sea near the Ahwar district in Abyan province, security sources told Reuters.
Abdul Qadir Bajameel, a health official in the province, said, “Ten people have been rescued – nine Ethiopians and one Yemeni.” He added that dozens remain unaccounted for.
Two medics told Reuters that search efforts were continuing as rescue teams looked for survivors.
According to the International Organisation for Migration (IOM), Yemen is seeing a steady rise in the number of irregular migrants coming from Africa.
Every year, thousands of people try to cross the Bab al-Mandab strait from Djibouti and Eritrea to Yemen, hoping to eventually reach Saudi Arabia or other Gulf countries in search of jobs.
The IOM says this journey from the Horn of Africa to Yemen is one of the most dangerous in the world. “More than 60,000 migrants arrived in Yemen last year,” the agency said.
