MOSCOW (Sputnik) — Shortly after the incident, IOM staff discovered graves of 29 migrants on a beach in Shabwa during their routine patrol, the press release added.
"Early this morning (09/08), a human smuggler, in charge of the boat, forced more than 120 Somali and Ethiopian migrants into the pitching sea as they approached the coast of Shabwa, a Yemeni Governorate along the Arabian Sea. The migrants had been hoping to reach countries in the Gulf via war-torn Yemen," the press release read.
"The dead had been buried rapidly by those who survived the smuggler’s deadly actions. IOM is working closely with the International Committee of the Red Cross to ensure appropriate care for the deceased migrants’ remains," according to the press release.
According to IOM estimates, about 55,000 migrants left the Horn of Africa for war-torn Yemen since January 2017. More than 30,000 of those migrants are under the age of 18 and come from Somalia and Ethiopia, while a third of them are said to be female.
In late July, IOM reported about 316 Somali nationals being return to their home country from Yemen after a five-month effort by the IOM team to evacuate them following a smugglers' boat crash just a few kilometers away from Yemen's port.
