Bodies washed up along the shore of Abyan, in southern Yemen. The boat that carried them had gone down early on Sunday, August 3, 2025, and the toll stood at 68 dead and 74 missing.
The vessel had carried 154 Ethiopian migrants across the Gulf of Aden. Only 12 survived, according to Abdusattor Esoev, who heads the International Organization for Migration in Yemen and spoke to The Associated Press. The rest are missing and presumed dead.
Esoev gave a breakdown of the dead. The bodies of 54 migrants washed ashore in the district of Khanfar. Another 14 were found dead and taken to the hospital morgue in Zinjibar, the capital of Abyan province. Abyan’s security directorate described a large search-and-rescue effort and said many bodies lay scattered over a wide stretch of shore.
A route that keeps filling with the desperate
Yemen has endured more than a decade of civil war, yet it is still a main route for people from East Africa and the Horn of Africa heading for the Gulf Arab states to find work. Smugglers move them across the Red Sea or the Gulf of Aden in boats that are often overcrowded and dangerous. AllAfrica noted that many Ethiopians on the journey face violence and abuse, and that poverty and hunger at home have been worsened by conflict and climate shocks.
This wreck is the latest of many. Hundreds of migrants have died or vanished in shipwrecks off Yemen in recent months. In March, according to the IOM, two migrants died and 186 went missing after four boats capsized off Yemen and Djibouti.
Arrivals have been falling. An IOM report in March said more than 60,000 migrants reached Yemen in 2024, compared with 97,200 in 2023, probably because of tighter patrols of the water. The IOM has called the route between the Horn of Africa and Yemen one of the world’s most dangerous migration corridors.
Sources
- At least 68 African migrants killed after boat capsizes off Yemen coast, U.N. says
- African Migrant Boat Capsizes Near Yemen, Scores Dead
