Fifty-five more migrants feared drowned after being forced from boat off Yemen – UN agency

GENEVA/BRUSSELS: Some 180 young Ethiopian and Somali migrants, many weakened by hunger and drought in their home countries, were forced from a boat into rough seas off Yemen by smugglers today and 55 were presumed drowned, the UN migration agency said.
It was the second such incident in as many days off Shabwa province in southern Yemen, where 50 teenage African migrants were “deliberately drowned” yesterday by a smuggler who forced 120 passengers off his boat, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) said.
The IOM said it feared the incidents might mark the start of a new trend in people-smuggling that could lead to more deaths.
Twenty nine dead bodies washed up on the shore after yesterday’s tragedy while twenty-seven others made it alive to the shore, it said.
“They were shocked, exhausted and quite desperate,” Laurent de Boeck, the IOM Yemen Chief of Mission, told Reuters in an interview in Brussels.

Reuters