U.N. migration agency says boat capsizing off Yemen killed 68 African migrants

# U.N. migration agency says boat capsizing off Yemen killed 68 African migrants

Event date: August 3, 2025.

A boat carrying 154 Ethiopian migrants capsized off Yemen's southern coast on Sunday, leaving 68 people dead, 74 missing and 12 survivors, according to the U.N.'s migration agency and The Associated Press. The disaster is the latest in a long series of deadly crossings along one of the world's most dangerous migration routes.

Abdusattor Esoev, the International Organization for Migration's head in Yemen, told AP that the vessel sank early Sunday in the Gulf of Aden off Abyan province. He said 54 bodies washed ashore in the district of Khanfar and 14 others were found dead and taken to a hospital morgue in Zinjibar, the provincial capital.

The boat was headed toward the Gulf Arab states, where many East African migrants seek work after crossing from the Horn of Africa. Smugglers often pack people onto overcrowded boats for the crossing, and that combination of poor seaworthiness, human desperation and rough seas has repeatedly produced mass fatalities.

The AP report says only 12 migrants survived the shipwreck and the rest were missing and presumed dead. That means the final death toll could rise further if search and recovery efforts continue. The Abyan security directorate said a major search-and-rescue operation was underway because bodies were scattered across a wide stretch of shore.

Yemen remains a major route despite more than a decade of civil war. Migrants continue to use the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden routes because they see the journey as one of the few ways to reach better-paid work. But the same route has turned into a graveyard, with hundreds dying in shipwrecks in recent months.

The AP report also noted that more than 60,000 migrants arrived in Yemen in 2024, down from 97,200 in 2023, likely because of tighter patrols. Even so, the route remains active enough to keep generating repeated tragedies.

The scale of this week's disaster is painful even by the standards of the route. A single crossing that leaves 68 confirmed dead, 74 missing and only 12 alive is not just a transport accident; it is a mass-casualty event driven by conflict, poverty and the deadly economics of smuggling.

For the families waiting in Ethiopia and elsewhere, the numbers may change as recovery work continues. But the central fact will not: another migrant boat has gone down off Yemen, and once again the journey north has ended in death for dozens.