At least 76 people were killed and dozens are missing after a boat carrying mostly Ethiopian migrants sank off Yemen, in the latest tragedy on the perilous sea route, officials told AFP Monday.
Yemeni security officials said 76 bodies had been recovered and 32 people rescued from the shipwreck in the Gulf of Aden. The UN migration agency said 157 people were on board.
Sunday’s incident was “one of the deadliest” migrant shipwrecks off Yemen this year, Abdusattor Esoev, the International Organisation for Migration’s chief of mission for Yemen, told journalists.
The ship was headed to Abyan governorate in southern Yemen, a frequent destination for boats smuggling African migrants hoping to reach the wealthy Gulf states.
Some of those rescued have been transferred to Yemen’s Aden, near Abyan, a security official said.
The UN agency earlier gave a toll of at least 68 dead, with Esoev telling journalists that “the fate of the missing is still unknown”.
Despite the civil war that has ravaged Yemen since 2014, the impoverished country has remained a key transit point for irregular migration, in particular from Ethiopia which itself has been roiled by ethnic conflict.
Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Holy See’s secretary of state, said the Pope was “deeply saddened by the devastating loss of life”.
‘558 deaths in 2024’
Each year, thousands brave the so-called “Eastern Route” from Djibouti to Yemen across the Red Sea, in the hope of eventually reaching oil-rich Gulf countries such as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
Despite the risks, many migrants continue to make the trip, with more than 60,000 arriving in Yemen in 2024 alone. The IOM recorded at least 558 deaths on the Red Sea route last year, 462 of them from boat accidents.
In the past decade, the IOM’s Missing Migrants Project recorded more than 3,400 deaths and missing people along the route – 1,400 of those deaths were due to drowning.
“This route is predominantly controlled by smugglers and human-trafficking networks… Refugees and migrants have no other alternative but to hire their services,” Ayla Bonfiglio, of the Mixed Migration Centre research and policy organisation, told AFP.
“Migrants are well aware of the risks, but with no legal pathways and families relying on remittances from Saudi Arabia or the Emirates, many feel they have no choice,” she added.
In March, two boats carrying more than 180 migrants sank off the coast of Yemen’s Dhubab district due to rough seas, with only two crew members rescued.
Migrants arriving at Migrant Response Points in Yemen have also reported people-smugglers becoming more reckless by knowingly sending boats into dangerous conditions to avoid patrols, according to an IOM report.
Last month, at least eight people died after smugglers forced 150 migrants off a boat in the Red Sea, according to the IOM.
‘Need to make legal pathway accessible’
Yemen’s chief for the International Organization for Migration (IOM), Abdusattor Esoev, emphasised the importance of strengthening legal safeguards for migrants to prevent them from being exploited by smugglers.
“What we are advocating for all member states… is to enhance their regular pathways so people can take legal ways in order to migrate, instead of being trapped or deceived by smugglers and taking those dangerous journeys,” he said.
The IOM previously described the journey from the Horn of Africa – composed of Somalia, Djibouti, Ethiopia and Eritrea – to Yemen as “one of the busiest and most perilous mixed migration routes”. For many the final destination is Saudi Arabia.
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The vessel that sank off Abyan was carrying mostly Ethiopian migrants, according to the province’s security directorate and an IOM source.
Yemeni security forces were recovering a “significant” number of bodies, the Abyan directorate said on Sunday.
On their way to the Gulf, migrants cross the Bab al-Mandab Strait, the narrow waterway at the mouth of the Red Sea that is a major route for international trade, as well as for migration and human trafficking.
Once in Yemen, the Arabian Peninsula’s poorest country, migrants often face other threats to their safety.
The IOM says tens of thousands of migrants have become stranded in Yemen and suffer abuse and exploitation during their journeys.
In April, more than 60 people were killed in a strike blamed on the United States that hit a migrant detention centre in Yemen, according to the Huthi rebels who control much of the country.
The wealthy Gulf monarchies host significant populations of foreign workers from South Asia and Africa.