Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - The UNHCR (UN High Commissioner for Refugees) reports that 35 people drowned Wednesday off the coast of Yemen’s Abyan region in the Gulf of Aden, after one of two smugglers’ boats capsized. Some 220 people were making the passage from near Bossasso in Somalia, with 117 people on the boat that overturned.
A UNHCR’s partner agency, the Society of Human Solidarity (SHS), has recovered 35 bodies and believes the other people made it safely to shore, with 165 people transferred to UNHCR’s Ahwar Reception Centre in Yemen. The survivors included an 8-year-old Somali boy whose
mother drowned, SHS reported.
“So far this year,” reports the UNHCR, “387 boats and 19,622 people have arrived in Yemen after making the perilous voyage across the Gulf of Aden from the Horn of Africa. A total of 131 people have died and at least 66 others are presumed missing at sea. Those who make the crossing are fleeing desperate situations of civil war, political instability, poverty and famine in Somalia and the Horn of Africa.”
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News story, GenevaLunch, 23 April 2009.
Filed under: International organizations
Tags: boats, capsized, Gulf of Aden, Horn of Africa, International organizations, refugees, Somalia, UNHCR, Yemen