Toll in Yemen boat tragedies rises to 91

Sanaa: Rescue officials found 91 bodies following accidents involving two boatloads of people being smuggled across Gulf of Aden near Yemen's rocky coast earlier this week, sources said on Wednesday. A total of 114 refugees on the boats are still unaccounted for.

Two boats smuggling 256 refugees from African Horn, mostly Somalis, capsized off the rocky shoreline of Jabal Riada and Bir Ali in Yemen's Shabwa province about 760 km southeast of Sana.

"The first boat was carrying 128 on board and only five of them survived," Salah Al Aksar, director of the Mayfa'a Refugees Reception Centre in Shabwa, told Gulf News. "The second was carrying 128 refugees, 46 of whom survived."

"In cooperation with the local authorities and citizens, we have found 91 bodies till this morning and have buried them," said director of the centre run by the UN refugees agency, United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).

Despite the government's plans to combat smuggling along its 2,000 km coastline, smuggling of refugees from African Horn is yet to come to an end.

"We are fighting smuggling but the possibilities and resources are not enough to prevent smuggling completely throughout our long coastline," an official from the Coast Guards Authority told Gulf News.

The recent spate of arrivals comes after a two-week lull because of bad weather in the Gulf of Aden, which prevented small boats from making the perilous crossing.

Drought, recent clashes in parts of Somalia and general instability are believed to have prompted more people to take help of smugglers.

According to UNHCR, a total of 1,295 Somali refugees and 73 Ethiopians have been registered at UNHCR's Mayfa'a Reception Centre in Yemen since January 12. Many others go unreported, said officials.

Thousands of Somalis, Ethiopians and people of other nationalities arrive in Yemen every year after perilous voyages in smugglers' boats across the Gulf of Aden, most of them from the Bossaso area of eastern Somalia.

Somalis are usually taken by UNHCR to the Mayfa'a Reception Centre. Yemen is a signatory to the 1951 Refugee Convention and automatically grants refugee status to Somalis fleeing their conflict-ridden homeland.

Last September, UNHCR called for international action to stem the flow of people falling prey to smugglers after at least 150 people died over three weeks in boat accidents.

The refugee agency has been working with local authorities in north-eastern Somali's Puntland region on ways to inform people about the dangers of using smugglers to cross the Gulf of Aden. This includes production of videos and radio broadcasts to raise awareness among Somalis and Ethiopians.

The writer is a journalist based in Sanaa