More than 140 migrants dead after boat capsizes off the coast of Yemen

The Gulf of Aden seen from Sirah Island, Yemen. Crossing the gulf is the first step in one of the world’s most dangerous journeys for migrants. Tens of thousands attempted the trip last year.

By Saeed Al-Batati and Vivian Nereim

More than 140 migrants were killed when their overloaded boat capsized as they tried to cross the sea between the Horn of Africa and Yemen, the International Organization for Migration said Sunday.

The boat trip across the Gulf of Aden is the first part of one of the most dangerous migration and smuggling routes in the world, which desperate men and women from Ethiopia and other East African countries traverse as they attempt to reach oil-rich Saudi Arabia.

The boat, believed to have been carrying 150 people, capsized Saturday night near the southern Yemeni province of Abyan, Yemini health and security officials said. The IOM said in a statement said that 68 Ethiopian migrants had died. There were at least 12 survivors. An unknown number of passengers remain missing. The death toll is expected to rise as more bodies wash ashore, the local officials said.

“This heartbreaking incident underscores the urgent need for enhanced protection mechanisms for migrants undertaking perilous journeys, often facilitated by unscrupulous smugglers who exploit desperation and vulnerability,” the IOM statement said.

Abdul Kader Bajamel, a health official in Zinjibar, said, “The bodies of the dead and at least a dozen survivors, including two Yemeni smugglers, were taken to hospitals in Abyan.” He added, “Because the hospital’s morgues could not accommodate this large number of bodies, and to avoid an environmental crisis, the governor of Abyan ordered the immediate burial of the dead and formed an emergency committee to search for the missing.”

Salah Balleel, a health official in Khanfar district in Abyan, said that a hospital in the district had received one dead migrant and treated 11 survivors.

“The small boat was carrying far too many people,” Balleel said. “We provided first aid and other medical assistance, and all the survivors have since left the hospital.”

The migrants’ journey, called the Eastern Route, is one of the “busiest and riskiest migration routes in the world,” according to the IOM. Tens of thousands of people attempted the trip last year, fleeing conflict, poverty, drought or political repression in countries including Ethiopia, Eritrea and Somalia.

To reach Saudi Arabia — where many hope to find work and disappear into a vast informal economy — they must first traverse Yemen, which shares a long, porous border with the kingdom.

Yemen has been torn apart by its own war since 2014, when the Houthis ousted the internationally recognized government from the country’s capital, Sanaa. A Saudi-led military coalition — backed by U.S. military assistance and weaponry — embarked on a bombing campaign to rout the militia from power. Hundreds of thousands of people died from the violence, disease and starvation that resulted, in what became one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises.