Overview
- The vessel carrying 154 Ethiopian migrants sank in the Gulf of Aden off Abyan province on August 3, according to the head of the International Organization for Migration in Yemen.
- Authorities have recovered 68 bodies washed ashore near Khanfar and Zinjibar and rescued 12 survivors, while 74 migrants remain unaccounted for.
- Smugglers’ practice of overloading unregulated boats has fuelled a series of shipwrecks that have claimed hundreds of lives along Yemen’s southern coast.
- IOM data show migrant arrivals to Yemen fell from 97,200 in 2023 to about 60,000 in 2024 after stepped-up maritime patrols, but crossings persist.
- Yemen’s decade-long civil war has turned its southern waters into a perilous corridor for East African migrants seeking work in Gulf Arab states.