Over 90 drown in boat disaster

A boat carrying over 100 Somalis seeking a new life in Yemen capsized last week in the Red Sea halfway through its voyage. Over 90 people were believed to have drowned after the boat sank, a local journalist told IRIN on Tuesday. Bile Mahmud Qabowsade of the 'Yool' newspaper in Bosaso, the commercial capital of the self-declared autonomous region of Puntland, northeastern Somalia, said the vessel was carrying some 120 passengers. It had been part of a convoy of four which left the beach port of Marero, 30 km east of Bosaso, for Yemen. Trouble started when the vessel's engine stalled "near some islands between Yemen and Somalia", Bile said. Other boats in the flotilla "threw a rope for the captain and three crew members and left the rest to fend for themselves", he added. "We have no accurate figures of the dead right now, but there is very little hope that any survivors will be found, given the fact that the boat was on the high seas when it sank," he told IRIN. The fate of the captain and three crew members is uncertain. However, Bile said he believed they had survived and "are here already or will be here soon". "We already have information that people on the other boats have contacted their kin to tell them they are safe," he said. Most of the passengers on the doomed vessel were from southern Somalia, "mostly young people of both sexes, with a sprinkling of families", Bile said. Most of them had paid up to US $500 for the trip to Yemen, from where they hoped to move on to Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states in search of work. "Almost everybody paid between $300 and $500 for the trip," he told IRIN. A similar incident in May last year claimed the lives of over 80 Somalis.