Military attack kills 42 Somali refugees off Yemen’s coast
HODEIDA, Yemen — The boat packed with dozens of Somali refugees was more than 30 miles off wartorn Yemen’s coast when a military vessel and a helicopter gunship swooped in, opening fire in the dead of night Friday, killing at least 42 people.
The attack, which Yemen’s Shiite rebels blamed on a Saudi-led coalition, highlighted the perils of a heavily used migration route running from the Horn of Africa to the oilrich Gulf, right through Yemen’s civil war. The coalition has been heavily bombarding the nearby coast around the Yemeni port of Hodeida, where it accuses the rebels, known as Houthis, of smuggling weapons in small boats. There was no immediate coalition comment.
A Yemeni trafficker who survived the attack said the boat was filled with Somali refugees, including women and children, who were trying to reach Sudan from Yemen, which has been racked by conflict for more than two years.
Al-Hassan Ghaleb Mohammed said the boat left from Ras Arra, in Yemen’s Hodeida province, and was 30 miles off the coast, near the Bab al-Mandab strait, when the military vessel open fire, followed by the helicopter gunship.
He described a scene of panic in which the terrified refugees waved flashlights, apparently to show they were not combatants. He said the helicopter then stopped firing, but only after dozens had been killed. Mohammed was unharmed in the attack.
The U.N. refugee agency said on its Twitter account that it was “appalled by this tragic incident, the latest in which civilians continue to disproportionately bear the brunt of conflict in Yemen.”
Laurent De Boeck, the head of the International Organization for Migration Yemeni office, said the boat was carrying between 140 and 160 migrants who had departed from southern Yemen.
He said the agency believes all on board the stricken vessel were registered refugees.