A boat capsized on Sunday in waters off Yemen’s coast, leaving 68 African migrants dead and 74 others missing, the U.N.’s migration agency said.

The recent shipwreck is part of a tragic pattern where numerous African migrants have perished while trying to escape war and poverty to reach affluent Gulf Arab nations.

The ill-fated boat, carrying 154 Ethiopian migrants, sank in the Gulf of Aden near the southern Yemeni province of Abyan early Sunday, as reported by Abdusattor Esoev, the chief of the International Organization for Migration in Yemen, to The Associated Press.

He confirmed that 54 bodies had been discovered on the shores of Khanfar, and another 14 were recovered and taken to a hospital morgue in Zinjibar, Abyan’s provincial capital along Yemen’s southern coast.

Only 12 migrants survived the shipwreck, and the rest were missing and presumed dead, Esoev said.

In a statement, the Abyan security directorate described a massive search-and-rescue operation given the large number of dead and missing migrants.

It said many dead bodies were found scattered across a wide area of the shore.

Even amid a prolonged civil war over more than ten years, Yemen remains a key transit point for migrants from East Africa and the Horn of Africa attempting to reach Gulf Arab states for employment opportunities.

Migrants are taken by smugglers on often dangerous, overcrowded boats across the Red Sea or Gulf of Aden.

Recently, hundreds of migrants have died or gone missing in maritime disasters near Yemen, such as in March when two migrants died and 186 were unaccounted for after four vessels overturned near Yemen and Djibouti, according to IOM reports.

In 2024, over 60,000 migrants made their way to Yemen, a decrease from 97,200 in 2023, likely due to increased patrols of the maritime routes, as indicated by a March report from the IOM.