As many as 100 migrants from Somalia were missing and feared drowned off the coast of Yemen after smugglers forced them overboard in the treacherous Gulf of Aden waters. Thirty bodies were found washed up on shore yesterday and were buried immediately as a search operation continued at sea.| "Vorga!" |
A Yemeni official said the boat was bound for Yemen's Shabwa province, some 300 miles south of San'a on the Gulf of Aden coast. He believed that between 100 and 118 migrants could have drowned.
The 30 bodies found so far were buried on Friday in Shabwa, in keeping with Islamic customs of quick burial, the official said. In a sign of how frequent such drownings are, he cautioned that it was not certain whether all 30 came from the boat, as bodies often float in on the Shabwa shores. During the first half of September some 165 bodies were found on the shore and buried, the interior ministry said in a statement.