DUBAI (Reuters) - Forty-two Somali refugees were killed when a helicopter gunship attacked their boat off Yemen on Thursday, the United Nations refugee agency said, and Somalia called on the Saudi-led coalition fighting in the country to investigate.

Mohamed al-Alay, a coastguard officer in the Houthi-controled Hodeidah area, said the refugees, carrying official UNHCR documents, were going to Sudan from Yemen when an Apache helicopter attacked near the strategic Bab al-Mandab strait.

The area is part of a broad front where forces loyal to Yemeni President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi, backed by a Saudi-led coalition of Arab states, are fighting the Iran-allied Houthi movement which controls most of north and western Yemen.

It was not immediately clear who carried out the attack.

The UNHCR said on its Twitter account that 42 refugees were reported dead and 39 wounded were being treated in hospitals. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) had earlier said 33 were dead, 29 wounded and other passengers were missing.

“We do not know who carried it out but survivors said they came under attack from another boat at 9 p.m., the crew used lights and shouted to signal this is a civilian boat,” ICRC spokeswoman Iolanda Jaquemet said.

“Nevertheless, it did not have any effect and a helicopter joined in the attack,” she said.

Somalia’s Foreign Affairs Minister Abdusalam Hadliye Omar expressed sorrow at what he described as a “horrific attack”.

“It is very sad to target a boat carrying Somali migrants near the coast of Hodeidah in Yemen,” he said in a statement. “We call on our partners in the Saudi-led coalition to investigate the raid.”

The Saudi-led coalition said it did not conduct any operations or have any engagement on Thursday in the Hodeidah area where the attack took place.

Coalition spokesman General Ahmed al-Asseri said Hodeidah remained under the control of the Houthis and the port continued to be used for “trafficking people, smuggling weapons and attacks against the line of communications in the Red Sea”.

“HEARTBREAKING SCENE”

Shabia Mantoo, the UNHCR spokeswoman in Yemen, said the vessel was carrying 140 people and trying to sail north out of Yemen when it was hit. She said many of the estimated 255,000 Somali refugees in Yemen are trying to leave because of the war.

“We are distressed by this incident and understand that refugees were traveling in a vessel off the coast of Hodeidah which was reportedly impacted during the course of hostilities,” she said.

A sailor who had been operating the boat, Ibrahim Ali Zeyad, said 80 refugees had been rescued.

“We just got information of a helicopter assault on a boat leaving Yemen, we believe for Sudan, full of Somalis,” International Organization for Migration (IOM) spokesman Joel Millman told a news briefing in Geneva, adding he was aware of 80 survivors being brought to hospitals in Hodeidah.

ICRC’s Eric Christopher Wyss said: “It was a heartbreaking scene. I saw many men, women and children either killed or horribly wounded.”

The Saudi-led coalition was formed in 2015 to fight the Houthis and troops loyal to former president Ali Abdullah Saleh who have fired missiles into neighboring Saudi Arabia.

The Bab al-Mandab is a strategic waterway in the Red Sea through which nearly 4 million barrels of oil are shipped daily.</s>© Abduljabbar Zeyad/Reuters The body of a Somali refugee, killed in an attack by a helicopter while travelling in a vessel off Yemen, is carried at the Red Sea port of Hodeidah, Yemen March 17, 2017.

More than 40 people including women and children have been shot dead aboard a boat carrying Somali refugees in the Red Sea off war-torn Yemen, officials said on Friday.



It was not immediately clear who was behind the attack.

The refugees were hit by light weapons fire in waters off rebel-held Hodeida, but the boat managed to dock in the city's port, an official there said.

The International Organization for Migration, which has operations in Yemen, said 42 bodies had been recovered.

The port official said dozens of Somalis who survived the attack, as well as three Yemeni traffickers, had been taken to the city's prison.

More than 30 wounded were reported to have been taken to hospital.

The rebel-controlled Saba agency accused the Saudi-led coalition battling the insurgents of attacking the refugees from the air but did not provide further details.

Major General Ahmed Assiri, spokesman for the coalition, dismissed the accusation and told AFP that the force had not been involved in fighting in Hodeida.

"There has been no firing by the coalition in this zone," he said.

The coalition has been backing pro-government forces waging an offensive from the south to retake Yemen's Red Sea coast from Huthi rebel forces.

The United Nations refugee agency UNHCR said 140 passengers were believed to have been aboard the vessel.

- Civilians bear the brunt - The attack drew condemnation from UN agencies and the International Committee for the Red Cross, with the ICRC also demanding an immediate investigation.

Despite a war that has cost more than 7,000 lives since March 2015 and brought the country to the brink of famine, Yemen continues to attract people fleeing the horn of Africa.

The UNHCR says that Yemen is hosting more than 255,000 Somali refugees.

Several refugee camps in southern Yemen host Somali refugees, although not in the Hodeida area.

The UNHCR said that as conditions worsen in Yemen, refugees are starting to use areas further to the north as a transit route.

It called on all sides in Yemen's war to protect civilians.

"UNHCR is appalled by this tragic incident, the latest in which civilians continue to disproportionately bear the brunt of conflict in Yemen," it said.

The ICRC's Eric Christopher Wyss, quoting survivors at the scene, said many people on the boat "were refugees from Somalia or Yemen, fleeing the conflict".

"It was a gruesome and heartbreaking scene. I saw many men, women and children either killed or horribly wounded," he said.

The IOM said it believed the boat had been headed for Sudan.

"We strongly condemn this attack and deplore such a tragic loss of life," the ICRC's director of operations, Dominik Stillhart, said in a statement.

"These people were themselves fleeing conflict, in search of safety and a better life. We call on the warring parties to conduct an immediate investigation into what happened."

The coast south of Hodeida has seen violent clashes over the past 24 hours, leaving 32 dead including 10 civilians, according to military and medical officials.

The fighting killed 14 rebels and eight soldiers supporting the UN-backed government of President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi, military sources said.

That came as pro-Hadi forces sought to advance northwards from the port town of Mokha in an offensive to retake Yemen's western coast from Huthi rebel forces.

Saudi-led coalition aircraft had taken part in the assault, the same sources said.

Seven fishermen were also killed off Hodeida by gunfire from an unidentified source, while a further seven were killed in a car near Mokha, hospital workers said.

The UN's humanitarian chief Stephen O'Brien has called Yemen "the largest humanitarian crisis in the world", with two-thirds of the population in need of aid.

On Friday, a rebel missile attack killed at least 26 members of the pro-government forces in a camp east of the capital Sanaa, officials at a hospital in Marib town said.



</s>An Apache gunship opened fire on a boat carrying Somali refugees off the coast of Yemen early Friday morning killing at least 42 people and wounding dozens of others.

The boat, which came under attack 30 miles off the Yemeni coast, was reportedly ferrying more than 100 men, women and children from Sudan.

Bullets from the attack helicopter riddled the boat ripping through the passengers, many of them women and children. Pictures posted online show the bloodied bodies of the victims being brought ashore. A number of the wounded taken to hospital were missing arms and legs.

Al-Hassan Ghaleb Mohammed, the boat’s pilot, told the Associated Press that the panicked passengers scrambled to hold up flashlights in order indicate that they were migrants and stop the surprise attack. All of those on the boat had official documentation from the UN Refugee Agency certifying that they were refugees.

As of this writing, no government has claimed responsibility for the attack, but it was most likely carried out by the Saudi-led coalition which has been waging a brutal war against Yemen for the last two years. Saudi Arabia and the United Araba Emirates are currently the only militaries flying Apache helicopters in the region, and there were reports of intensified airstrikes in Hodeida Thursday night.

Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf monarchies, with direct military support from the United States, have been waging a brutal war against Houthi rebels who seized control of much of western Yemen in 2015 and ousted the US and Saudi-backed president Abd Rabbu Hadi.

The Saudi-led offensive has so far killed more than 10,000 civilians, targeting hospitals, schools, factories, market places, farm fields and social infrastructure with airstrikes in an effort to break the Houthi’s resistance. A naval blockade of Yemen by the coalition, enforced with the support of the US Navy, has pushed the country, which imported 90 percent of its food stock prior to the war, to the brink of famine.

The US has been waging its own war in southeastern Yemen since 2009, launching drone strikes against targets and individuals purportedly affiliated with Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. The Trump administration has ramped up the offensive begun by Barack Obama which has already killed hundreds of people, including women and children.

Friday’s attack highlights the historic humanitarian crisis which is engulfing a significant portion of the African continent and Middle East, stretching from the Lake Chad region in West Africa to the Arabian Peninsula. The UN warned earlier this week of the largest humanitarian crisis since World War II as 20 million people in Yemen, Somalia, South Sudan and Nigeria face imminent starvation.

Civil wars stoked by the US government and its European allies combined with historic drought conditions are pushing millions across the Africa continent to flee their homes. It is estimated that at least 5.5 million African are refugees in other countries, and another 11 million are displaced within their own countries.

Even with the ongoing war, which has pushed the country to the brink of a famine, Yemen remains one of the most popular destinations for refugees fleeing war and famine in Somalia. At the end of February there were nearly 256,000 UN recognized refugees from Somali living in Yemen; this was second only to the more than 317,000 in Kenya.

Tens of thousands of people from across the Horn of Africa transit the Bab el Mandeb strait every year in order to reach the poorest country in the Middle East. Many of those who flee to Yemen end up in the Khazar refugee camp, a former military barracks located in a hot, desolate desert region two hours north of the southern port city of Aden.

While most intend for Yemen to be a temporary transit point, many thousands have been stuck at the Khazar camp for years on end. The camp currently holds 16,000 people, mostly from Somalia and Ethiopia.

With few employment opportunities for African refugees in Yemen, those who are physically able make the increasingly treacherous trek onwards to Europe. Hundreds of Somali refugees drowned in the Mediterranean in 2016 desperately trying to reach Italy.</s>Thirty-one Somali refugees were killed off the coast of Yemen when a helicopter attacked the boat they were travelling in, a coastguard in the Houthi-controlled Hodeidah area has said.

Mohamed al-Alay said the refugees, carrying official documents, from the UN high commissioner for refugees, were on their way from Yemen to Sudan when they were attacked late on Thursday by an Apache helicopter near the Bab el-Mandeb strait.

A sailor who had been operating the boat, Ibrahim Ali Zeyad, said 80 refugees were rescued after the incident.

It was not immediately clear who carried out the attack.</s>Refugees crossing oceans to flee war and famine have to contend with the risks drowning, dehydration and other perils on their journey. Now add Apache helicopters to the list.

On Friday, an Apache military helicopter reportedly opened fire on a boat packed with over 140 Somali migrants off the coast of Yemen.

Forty-two people were killed in the attack, according to the U.N. Refugee Agency (UNHCR). All 42 were reportedly carrying official U.N. refugee papers. Eighty survivors were rescued from the water after the attack and taken to a detention center in Hodieda, Yemen, the International Organization for Migration’s Laurent De Boeck told AP. He added the IOM is liaising with hospitals to ensure the survivors get the care they need.

The boat, filled with refugees attempting to flee war-torn Yemen including women and children, had made it about 30 miles offshore when a helicopter swooped in and opened fire. A local coast guard official from the Houthi-rebel controlled coast of Yemen told Reuters an Apache helicopter attacked the boat, though it remains unclear who is responsible for the attack.

Saudi Arabia, which leads an Arab air campaign against the Iran-backed Houthi rebels, owns U.S.-made Apache helicopters. A spokesperson for the Saudi-led coalition said the coalition didn’t operate in the region of the attack Thursday.

The boat was en route to Sudan through the Bab-el-Mandeb, a strait between Yemen, Djibouti, and Eritrea connects the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden.

The attack raises the death toll on civil war already infamous for high civilian casualties. Aid organizations and human rights groups lambasted Saudi Arabia for indiscriminately targeting civilians in its bombing campaign.

“UNHCR is appalled by this tragic incident, the latest in which civilians continue to disproportionately bear the brunt of conflict in Yemen,” a spokesperson for the U.N. refugee agency said.

The conflict has killed over 10,000 people. Some 500,000 Somalis lived in Yemen when the conflict first broke out in 2014. International aid groups worry the Somalis who fled their home country for fear of violence will be displaced yet again if the conflict doesn’t end.

On Wednesday, the U.N. also warned the country is facing one of the world’s worst hunger crises. Humanitarian organizations called on the international community to send more aid to Yemen, where as many as 17 million people could be on the brink of famine.</s>Saudi Arabia’s invasion of Yemen has not only produced a humanitarian calamity in that country, but appears to be extending to people who are even adjacent to Yemen, as a Saudi military helicopter attacked a boat full of Somali refugees aiming to reach the Yemeni port city of Hodeidah, killing at least 42 of them.

Hodeidah is a Red Sea port that has been the primary point of entry for humanitarian aid into Shi’ite northern Yemen, and subsequently has been regularly attacked by Saudi Arabia itself, with regular airstrikes badly damaging port infrastructure.

Somali refugees have long flocked to Yemen, just a relatively short boat ride away, though the Saudi invasion has obviously made that trip both riskier, and lower-reward, since Yemen itself is facing major humanitarian shortages because of the Saudi blockade.

The UN High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) reported that the slain refugees, whose bodies arrived in Hodeidah along with some survivors, included people who had official identifying documents from the UNHCR confirming their refugee status.
• Syrian Forces Continue to Regain Control of Villages Around Aleppo - March 16th, 2017</s>SANAA, Yemen — At least 42 refugees have been killed and dozens injured after the boat they were traveling on was fired upon off Yemen’s western coast, according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM).

The boat was carrying up to 160 people when an unknown assailant attacked it early Friday, IOM spokesman Joel Millman said. At least 24 of the injured were being treated at nearby hospitals but dozens more were unaccounted for, he said.

According to the IOM, witnesses have given conflicting accounts of whether a helicopter or a motorized military vessel opened fire on the boat.

There has been no claim of responsibility for the attack.

Many of the victims were believed to have originated in Somalia, but it is not yet clear how many, the General Consul for the Somali General Consulate in Yemen Ahmed Abdi Hassan told CNN. The attack took place in a “military area,” he said.

The UN’s refugee agency (UNHCR) said Friday that the refugees were being carried across the Red Sea en route to Sudan.

On Saturday, the agency’s spokeswoman in Yemen, Shabia Mantoo, told CNN that 39 people were understood to have been injured, some critically.

“Those injured are receiving treatment in hospitals and are quite shaken by this traumatic event. Our staff have visited them and are providing them with necessary support,” Mantoo said.

She said the ongoing conflict in Yemen meant that medical supplies for the survivors were limited.

The UNHCR was working with authorities to determine where the Somali refugees would go next, Mantoo said, with the main priority making sure they received proper treatment, both physically and psychologically.

Yemen has been in the grip of civil war since 2015, when Houthi rebels — a minority Shia group from the north of the country — drove out the US-backed government, led by President Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi, and took over the capital, Sanaa.

The crisis quickly escalated into a multi-sided war, which allowed al Qaeda and ISIS — other enemies of the Houthis — to grow stronger amid the chaos. The Houthis are backed by Iran, while a coalition led by neighboring Saudi Arabia supports of Hadi’s government.

“As conditions in Yemen deteriorate as a result of the ongoing conflict and humanitarian crisis, refugees and asylum seekers are increasingly fleeing onwards, following established migratory routes, including across the Red Sea to Sudan with the intention of heading onwards to Europe.

“This tragic incident is the latest in which innocent civilians, including Yemenis, refugees, asylum seekers and migrants, continue to suffer and disproportionately bear the brunt of the conflict in Yemen,” the UNHCR said in a statement Friday.

According to the UNHCR, Yemen is hosting more than 255,000 Somali refugees. In February, the organization launched a campaign aimed at spreading awareness about the dangers of crossing the Gulf of Aden and Red Sea from the African continent to war-stricken Yemen.</s>HODEIDA, Yemen (AP) — A helicopter gunship attacked a boat packed with Somali migrants off the coast of Yemen overnight Thursday, killing at least 31 people, according to a U.N. agency, Yemeni officials and a survivor who witnessed the attack.

Yemen's Shiite rebels accused the Saudi-led air coalition of carrying out the attack. The coalition has been heavily 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. There was no immediate coalition comment.

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

Al-Hassan Ghaleb Mohammed told The Associated Press the boat had left from Ras Arra, along the southern coastline in Yemen's Hodeida province, and was 30 miles (50 kilometers) off the coast, near the Bab al-Mandab strait, when the helicopter gunship attacked.

He described a scene of panic in which the refugees held up flashlights, apparently to show that they were poor migrants. He said the helicopter then stopped firing, but only after more than 30 Somalis had been killed. Mohammed was unharmed in the attack.

The Houthis said they had shot down a helicopter gunship in the same area a day earlier, without providing evidence. They also said the coalition had carried out a wave of airstrikes over the past 48 hours in southern Hodeida, including a helicopter gunship assault on a fishing vessel that killed a number of fishermen hours before the strike on the migrant boat.

The Saudi-led and U.S.-backed coalition began striking the rebels and their allies in March 2015, hoping to drive the Houthis from the capital, Sanaa, and restore the internationally recognized government. The rebels remain in control of Sanaa and much of northern Yemen, and the conflict, which has killed an estimated 10,000 civilians, is in a stalemate.</s>MOSCOW (Sputnik) — The refugees were carrying official UNHCR documents, The Guardian newspaper reported, citing a local coast guard officer.

It has not been established yet to whom the aircraft belonged.

Yemen's civil war between the internationally recognized Aden-based government of President Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi and the Houthi rebel movement backed by army units loyal to former President Ali Abdullah Saleh erupted in March 2015. The same month, the Saudi-led coalition of Arab countries started carrying out airstrikes against the Houthis at Hadi's request.

According to the UN Refugee Agency, 180,992 people left Yemen in the period between April 2015 and October 2016.</s>A helicopter gunship attacked a boat packed with Somali migrants off the coast of Yemen overnight Thursday, killing at least 31 people, according to a U.N. agency, Yemeni officials and a survivor who witnessed the attack.

Yemen's Shiite rebels accused the Saudi-led air coalition of carrying out the attack. The coalition has been heavily 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. There was no immediate coalition comment.

 

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

 

 Al-Hassan Ghaleb Mohammed told The Associated Press the boat had left from Ras Arra, along the southern coastline in Yemen's Hodeida province, and was 30 miles (50 kilometers) off the coast, near the Bab al-Mandab strait, when the helicopter gunship attacked.

 

 He described a scene of panic in which the refugees held up flashlights, apparently to show that they were poor migrants. He said the helicopter then stopped firing, but only after more than 30 Somalis had been killed. Mohammed was unharmed in the attack.

 

 The Houthis said they had shot down a helicopter gunship in the same area a day earlier, without providing evidence. They also said the coalition had carried out a wave of airstrikes over the past 48 hours in southern Hodeida, including a helicopter gunship assault on a fishing vessel that killed a number of fishermen hours before the strike on the migrant boat.

 

 The Saudi-led and U.S.-backed coalition began striking the rebels and their allies in March 2015, hoping to drive the Houthis from the capital, Sanaa, and restore the internationally recognized government. The rebels remain in control of Sanaa and much of northern Yemen, and the conflict, which has killed an estimated 10,000 civilians, is in a stalemate.

 

 Laurent De Boeck, the head of the International Organization for Migration in the rebel-held Yemeni capital, Sanaa, said the U.N. agency believes all those on board the stricken vessel were registered refugees.

 

 De Boeck said 77 survivors were taken to a detention center in Hodeida. He said the IOM is in contact with the hospital, clinics, and the detention center to provide the necessary medical care.

 

 A Yemeni medical official in Hodeida said only 14 bodies had arrived so far, adding that women were among the dead. Another 25 wounded people, including some who had lost arms and legs, were brought to the hospital, he said, speaking on condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorized to speak to the media.

 

 The U.N. refugee agency said on its Twitter account that it was "appalled by this tragic incident, the latest in which civilians continue to disproportionately bear the brunt of conflict in Yemen.''

 

 Despite more than 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 neighboring oil-rich Saudi Arabia.

 

 More than 111,500 migrants landed on Yemen's shores last year, up from around 100,000 the year before, according to the Regional Mixed Migration Secretariat, a grouping of international agencies that monitors migration in the area.

 

 The turmoil has left migrants vulnerable to abuse at the hands of the armed trafficking rings, many of which are believed to be connected to the multiple armed groups involved in the war.
An unknown perpetrator using an Apache helicopter fires upon a boat carrying Somali refugees off the coast of Yemen, killing at least 40 of them, injuring 35 more.