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The International Organization for Migration says that some 2,000 migrants have arrived in Djibouti from Yemen in the past three weeks alone.
Ethiopian migrants wait to be registered at a temporary International Organization for Migration (IOM) shelter after being returned from Yemen to Ethiopia’s capital Addis Ababa on January 31, 2019 (Tiksa Negeri / File Photo / Reuters ).
The International Organization for Migration has said at least eight migrants have drowned and 12 have disappeared after smugglers forced them off a boat near Djibouti, a nation in the Horn of Africa.
The remaining 14 migrants survived and are receiving medical care, an IOM statement said on Sunday.
They were all thought to be Ethiopians and were making the passage to Djibouti from Yemen, a reversal of the usual migrant journey to seek work in richer Gulf nations such as Saudi Arabia.
The Covid-19 pandemic and the conflict in Yemen have made travel to the Gulf nations more dangerous and some migrants have returned.
This ship full of migrants is believed to have failed to reach Saudi Arabia, the statement said.
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Witness count
Witnesses said that three smugglers forced the young men and women into the water.
“Smugglers are known to exploit migrants on this route in this way, many of whom have to pay or their families have to pay large sums to facilitate the journey,” the statement said.
Eight bodies were washed ashore and buried by the Djiboutian authorities.
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“This tragedy is a wake-up call,” said IOM spokeswoman Yvonne Ndege, warning that more tragedies could occur as hundreds of migrants leave Yemen every day on the precarious boat trip through the Bab al Mandeb Strait.
In 2017, up to 50 migrants from Somalia and Ethiopia were “deliberately drowned” when a smuggler forced them into the sea off the coast of Yemen.
And in 2018, at least 30 migrants and refugees were killed when a ship sank off Yemen, with survivors reporting gunfire.
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Source: AP
