42 refugees die in military attack on boat

A military vessel and a helicopter gunship attacked a boat packed with Somali refugees off Yemen – killing at least 42 people, according to a UN agency.

Yemen’s Shiite rebels accused the Saudi-led coalition which is waging war in the country of carrying out the attack. The coalition has been bombarding the nearby coast around the Yemeni city of Hodeida, and it accuses the rebels – known as Houthis – of smuggling weapons into the port in small boats.

A Yemeni trafficker who survived the attack said the boat was filled with Somali refugees, including women andchildren, whoweretrying to reach Sudan from war-torn Yemen.

AlHassan GhalebMohammedsaid the boat leftRas Arra, in Yemen’s Hodeida province, and was 30 miles offshore when the military vessel and helicopter gunship opened fire. He described a scene of panic in which the refugees held up torches, apparently toshow they were poor migrants.

The helicopter then stopped firing, but only after dozens had been killed.

The UN’s migration agency said 42 bodies have been recovered.

The Houthis said the coalition carried out awave of air strikes over 48 hours in southern Hodeida, including a helicopter gunship assault on a fishing vessel that killed several fishermen hours before the strike on the migrants.

The Saudi-led and USbacked coalition began striking the rebels inMarch 2015, hoping to drive the Houthis from the capital, Sanaa, and restore the internationally recognised government.

The rebels remain in control of Sanaa and much of northernYemen, and the conflict, which has killed an estimated 10,000 civilians, is in a stalemate.

AYemenimedical official in Hodeida said as well as the dead, 25 wounded people, including some who had lost arms and legs, were brought to the hospital. Despite two years of fighting in Yemen, African migrants continue to arrive in the war-torn country, where there is no central authority to prevent them from travelling onward to a better life in neighbouring oil-rich Saudi Arabia.

The turmoil has left migrants vulnerable to abuse by the armed trafficking rings, many of which are believed to be connected to the multiple armed groups involved in the war.