A number of bodies washed up at Ras al-Arah on Yemen's Red Sea coast on Monday from a suspected migrant boat that sank offshore, a local official said.
The stretch of coast is notorious for the smuggling of migrants from the Horn of Africa into Yemen.
Residents in Ras al-Arah said bodies had washed up at dawn on Monday. A boat sank around 18 nautical miles off the coast of al-Mokha, the local official said.
The perilous sea journey from Horn of Africa countries including Ethiopia, Eritrea, Somalia and Djibouti, is part of a longstanding migration route to take people north through Yemen into the rich Gulf states for work.
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Dozens of African migrants are feared dead after a boat carrying them reportedly capsized off Yemen's coast.
ReplyDeleteFishermen in Yemen's Lahj province told AFP news agency that they had recovered 25 bodies in the water near Ras al-Ara.
A provincial official said a boat with between 160 and 200 people on board had overturned in the area two days ago.
The International Organization for Migration (IOM) said it was verifying reports that a vessel carrying a large number of migrants had sunk.
"IOM teams are on the ground and ready to respond to the needs of survivors," it tweeted.
A Yemeni news site, Aden al-Ghad, meanwhile cited sources as saying that as many as 150 migrants had drowned, and that four Yemenis were among the missing...bbc