Smugglers toss migrants into sea

UNITED NATIONS » Smugglers have thrown some 280 migrants into the sea off the coast of Yemen in the last two days, causing more than 50 to drown and leaving more than 30 missing, the U.N. migration agency said Thursday.

U. N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric said the migrants who were forced from boats in two separate “deeply troubling” incidents were hoping to reach countries in the Gulf via wartorn Yemen.

The International Organization for Migration said Wednesday that up to 50 migrants from Ethiopia and Somalia were “deliberately drowned” Thursday by a smuggler off Yemen. The U. N. agency said 160 Ethiopian migrants were forced into the Arabian Sea.

The IOM said in a statement that its staff found six bodies on the beach — two male and four female — and 13 people were still missing. It said 84 migrants left the beach before IOM staff arrived while it provided emergency medical assistance as well as food and water to 57 surviving migrants.

Dujarric said the situation for migrants trying to cross the Mediterranean Sea and the Sahara desert are “just as heartbreaking” as the tragedy unfolding off Yemen.

He said 2,405 people have died or disappeared during their attempts to cross the Mediterranean and more than 265 people have died or were missing while traveling across the Sahara trying to reach the sea.

U. N. Secretary- General Antonio Guterres “is heartbroken by this continuing tragedy,” Dujarric said.

“This is why he continues to stress that the international community must give priority to preventing and resolving a variety of situations which both generate mass movement and expose those already on the move to significant danger,” the U. N. spokesman said.

The narrow waters between the Horn of Africa and Yemen have been a popular migration route despite Yemen’s conflict. Migrants, most of them Ethiopians, try to make their way to oil-rich Gulf countries in hopes of finding jobs.