SANA, Yemen — Dozens of bodies washed ashore Friday in Yemen after smugglers threw nearly 150 Somali migrants overboard in shark-infested waters, the latest such tragedy in one of the world’s most lawless stretches of ocean.
The Gulf of Aden between Yemen and the Horn of Africa already is notorious for Somali piracy. The hijacking of a freighter carrying a cargo of heavy weapons two weeks ago prompted NATO on Thursday to send warships to help U.S. Navy vessels patrolling the region.
The latest migrant deaths raised calls for those ships to also act against human trafficking in the same waters off Somalia, a country where there is no government control and armed groups are rampant.
“It’s essentially the same problems that allow piracy and smuggling,” said Roger Middleton, an expert on East Africa at the Chatham House think tank in London.
Dire economic conditions and violence in Somalia drive the waves of migrants, while the general lawlessness that gives pirates a free hand also opens the door for smugglers.
About 32,000 migrants have made the hazardous sea journey to Yemen this year — 22,000 of them Somalis, according to the Yemeni government and the U.N. refugee agency.
Smugglers are known to cram dozens of men, women and children onto small boats and often beat and abuse the migrants during the journey, which can take up to three days. To avoid Yemeni patrols, the smugglers often dump their passengers far from shore and force them to swim the rest of the way.
In the latest instance, about 150 migrants departed Somalia on Monday, and when their vessel was about 3 miles off Yemen’s southern Shabwa coast, the smugglers ordered everyone off, said Ron Redmond, a spokesman for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees.
Twelve of the passengers were put on a smaller boat to take them to shore, while the rest were forced to swim. Redmond told reporters in Geneva that 47 people were believed to have survived, but about 100 were missing and feared drowned.
As of Friday, 30 bodies had washed up, and they were buried immediately in keeping with Islamic custom, a Yemeni security official said. He estimated that up to 118 may have drowned. He spoke on condition of anonymity as he was not authorized to talk to media.
In a sign of how frequent such drownings are, he cautioned that it was not certain whether all 30 came from the boat in question.
