At least 76 people have died and dozens remain missing after a boat packed with mostly Ethiopian migrants capsized off the coast of Yemen, officials said Monday, marking the latest deadly incident on one of the world’s most perilous migration routes.
Yemeni security officials confirmed that 76 bodies had been recovered and 32 survivors rescued following the shipwreck in the Gulf of Aden.
The U.N. International Organization for Migration said the vessel was carrying 157 people when it went down near Abyan province in southern Yemen.
The area is a well-known landing point for smugglers ferrying migrants from the Horn of Africa who hope to reach wealthier Gulf nations in search of work and safety.
Several survivors were transported to the port city of Aden, just west of Abyan, according to a Yemeni security source.
The U.N. migration agency earlier gave a toll of at least 68 dead.
The IOM’s chief of mission in Yemen, Abdusattor Esoev, told Agence France-Presse (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, particularly 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 hopes 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, including 462 from boat accidents.
Last month, at least eight people died after smugglers forced migrants to disembark from a boat in the Red Sea, according to the U.N. migration agency.
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 conducting operations to recover a “significant” number of bodies, the Abyan directorate said 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 war-torn Yemen – the Arabian Peninsula’s poorest country – migrants often face further 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 U.S. that hit a migrant detention center in Yemen, according to the Houthi rebels, who control much of the country.
The wealthy Gulf monarchies host significant populations of foreign workers from South Asia and Africa.
