Africans Drown Trying to Reach Yemen on Rough Seas

Visits: 1414
(Rating 0.0/5 Stars) Total Votes: 0
0 0
Share via Social Media

Africans Drown Trying to Reach Yemen on Rough Seas

Share

More than 40 African migrants trying to reach Yemen by boat have drowned in heavy seas off the coast and a second boat with as many as 40 people aboard is missing, Yemeni and United Nations officials said Monday. Yemen’s Interior Ministry said on its Web site that three Somalis had been rescued after a vessel carrying 46 people, most of them from Ethiopia, capsized. The ministry also said that a second boat carrying Ethiopians had been missing. “It’s not known in which direction the wind took them and their fate is unknown,” the Yemeni Coast Guard said, according to the Interior Ministry’s Web site. The missing vessel was said to be carrying 35 to 40 Ethiopians, including women and children. The United Nations refugee agency said the boat that had capsized had 46 Ethiopian and Somali passengers, of whom five survived. Witnesses said the boat’s engine had become caught in some of the vessel’s fishing nets about three hours after it had left Djibouti. “This caused panic among the passengers who began to move around, causing the boat to capsize,” said Melissa Fleming, a spokeswoman for the refugee agency, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. She said that two Yemeni men who were helping to take the Africans to Yemen jumped off the boat. “It is not known whether they survived,” she said.