At least 13 dead after boat carrying migrants capsizes off Yemen coast, UN says

CAIRO — A boat carrying migrants has sunk off the coast of Yemen, leaving more than two dozen people dead or missing, the UN migration agency said Sunday, the latest in a series of shipwrecks that have claimed dozens of lives.

Despite a civil war that has lasted for nearly a decade, Yemen, which borders Saudi Arabia to the north and Oman to the northeast, remains a major route for East African migrants trying to reach wealthy Gulf countries for work.

The ship was carrying 25 Ethiopian migrants as well as the captain and his assistant, both Yemenis, when it capsized on Tuesday off Taiz province, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) said in a statement. The bodies of 11 men and two women were found along the shores of the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, which connects the Gulf of Aden to the Red Sea, while the other 14, including the two Yemenis, remain missing.

The migrants left from Djibouti, the IOM said.

“This latest tragedy is a stark reminder of the dangers migrants face on this route,” said Matt Huber, acting head of IOM Yemen. “Every life lost in these dangerous waters is one too many, and it is imperative that we do not trivialize these devastating losses.”

According to the agency, the number of migrants arriving in Yemen has tripled in recent years, from around 27,000 in 2021 to more than 97,200 last year, IOM said, and around 380,000 migrants are currently in the conflict-ravaged country.

To reach Yemen, migrants are taken by smugglers on often dangerous and overloaded boats that cross the Red Sea or the Gulf of Aden. Over the past decade, at least 2,082 migrants have gone missing along this route, including 693 who drowned, according to the IOM.

In June, at least 49 migrants died in a shipwreck off the southern coast of Yemen, which also left 140 missing, according to IOM. In April, another 62 migrants died in two separate shipwrecks off the coast of Djibouti while trying to reach Yemen.