Boat carrying refugees was travelling to Sudan when it was hit by airstrike from Apache helicopter, coastguard says
A victim of the attack is carried ashore in Yemen
A victim of the attack is carried ashore in Yemen. Eighty refugees were rescued. Photograph: Reuters
Friday 17 March 2017 16.41 GMT First published on Friday 17 March 2017 08.51 GMT
At least 42 Somali refugees were killed off the coast of Yemen late on Thursday when a helicopter reportedly attacked the boat they were travelling in.
Coastguard Mohamed al-Alay said the refugees, carrying official UN refugee agency (UNHCR) documents, were travelling from Yemen to Sudan when they were attacked by an Apache helicopter near the Bab el-Mandeb strait.
A senior official with the UN’s migration agency confirmed later that 42 bodies had been recovered after the military attack on a boat carrying refugees off the Yemeni coast.
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Mohammed Abdiker, emergencies director at the International Organization for Migration [IOM] in Geneva, said, however, that various survivors provided conflicting messages about whether the attack came from a military vessel or an attack helicopter that had taken off from the vessel.
Abdiker called the attack, which happened at about 3am, was “totally unacceptable” and that responsible combatants should have checked who was aboard the boat “before firing on it.”
One of the survivors, a Yemeni people trafficker, told the Associated Press his vessel had been hit by fire from a helicopter gunship. Al-Hassan Ghaleb Mohammed said the boat had been about 30 miles off the shore of Yemen when it was attacked.
He added that when the gunship opened fire, panic erupted among the refugees. They finally managed to hold up flashlights and show the helicopter they were migrants. He said the helicopter then stopped firing but only after more than 40 Somalis had been killed.
Despite the depiction of the incident, however, an IOM spokesman in Geneva said he was unable to confirm news reports indicating that an Apache had been responsible for the attack, but added: “Our confirmation is that there are dozens of deaths and many dozens of survivors brought to hospitals.”
A victim of the attack is carried ashore in Yemen
A victim of the attack is carried ashore in Yemen. Eighty refugees were rescued. Photograph: Reuters
Friday 17 March 2017 16.41 GMT First published on Friday 17 March 2017 08.51 GMT
At least 42 Somali refugees were killed off the coast of Yemen late on Thursday when a helicopter reportedly attacked the boat they were travelling in.
Global Development - The Guardian Is child labour always wrong? The view from Bolivia – podcast
Kary Stewart looks at why 850,000 children work in Bolivia, and whether the numbers can be vindicated by the country’s unique cultural context
Listen
Mohammed Abdiker, emergencies director at the International Organization for Migration [IOM] in Geneva, said, however, that various survivors provided conflicting messages about whether the attack came from a military vessel or an attack helicopter that had taken off from the vessel.
Abdiker called the attack, which happened at about 3am, was “totally unacceptable” and that responsible combatants should have checked who was aboard the boat “before firing on it.”
One of the survivors, a Yemeni people trafficker, told the Associated Press his vessel had been hit by fire from a helicopter gunship. Al-Hassan Ghaleb Mohammed said the boat had been about 30 miles off the shore of Yemen when it was attacked.
He added that when the gunship opened fire, panic erupted among the refugees. They finally managed to hold up flashlights and show the helicopter they were migrants. He said the helicopter then stopped firing but only after more than 40 Somalis had been killed.
Despite the depiction of the incident, however, an IOM spokesman in Geneva said he was unable to confirm news reports indicating that an Apache had been responsible for the attack, but added: “Our confirmation is that there are dozens of deaths and many dozens of survivors brought to hospitals.”
