At least 76 people have been 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 on Monday.
Yemeni security officials said 76 bodies had been recovered and 32 people rescued from the shipwreck in the Gulf of Aden. The UN’s migration agency said 157 people were on board.
The accident occurred off 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.
UN agency the International Organisation for Migration (IMO) earlier gave a toll of at least 68 dead.
The IOM’s country chief of mission, Abdusattor Esoev, told AFP 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.
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.
The IOM recorded at least 558 deaths on the Red Sea route last year, with 462 from boat accidents.
