Cairo – A boat overturned Sunday in the waters of the Costa de Yemen leaving 68 dead African migrants and another 74 missing, said the UN Migration Agency.
The tragedy was the last of a series of Yemen shipwrecks that killed hundreds of African migrants in the hope of reaching the rich Arab countries of the Gulf.
The ship, with 154 Ethiopian migrants on board, sank in the southern province of Abyan on early Sunday, Abdusattor ESOEV, head of the International Migration Organization in Yemen, said Associated Press.
He said that the bodies of 54 migrants took to land in the district of Khanfar, and another 14 were found dead and taken to a hospital morgue in Zinjibar, the provincial capital of Abyan on the southern coast of Yemen.
Only 12 migrants survived the shipwreck, and the rest were missing and presumed dead, said ESOV.
Despite more than a decade of civil war, Yemen is an important route for migrants from East Africa and the Horn of Africa who try to reach the Arabic countries of the Gulf to work. The smuggers take migrants in often dangerous and overpopulated ships through the Red Sea or the Gulf of Adén.
Hundreds of migrants have died or missing in Yemen shipwreck in recent months, even in March, when two migrants died and another 186 were missing after four ships overturned to Yemen and Djibouti, according to the IOM.
