An attack helicopter targeted a boat carrying Somali refugees off the coast of Yemen, killing at least 31 people holding U.N. travel documents, international migration officials said Friday.
It was not immediately clear who carried out the attack late Thursday, but a Yemeni coast guard official told the Reuters news agency that a U.S.-made Apache helicopter was involved.
That claim could not be immediately confirmed. Countries involved in the Yemen conflict, including Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, operate attack helicopters.
The attack underscores the dangers for any vessel operating off Yemen, which has been ravaged by a nearly two-year-old war led by Saudi forces against rebel forces. The country is also the base for militant factions including an al-Qaida faction that was targeted by a U.S.-led raid in late January whose casualties included a Navy SEAL killed during a counterattack.
A Yemeni coast guard official, Mohamed al-Alay, told Reuters that the refugees were on their way from Yemen to Sudan through the Bab al-Mandeb strait at the mouth of the Red Sea. Dozens of bodies pulled from the sea were laid out on the shore.
Such as trip would be a departure from previous policies by the U.N. refugee agency, which for months has been taking Somali refugees from Yemen back to Somalia by boat.
In Geneva, the spokesman for the International Organization for Migration, Joel Millman, told reporters that the death toll could rise beyond 31. The spokeswoman for the U.N. refugee agency in Yemen, Shabia Mantoo, confirmed that refugees were killed, but did not cite any specific casualty count.
A Twitter post by the UNHCR said it was “deeply distressed” by the incident.
Reports said up to 80 refugees had been rescued after the attack.
Some of the area around the strait is controlled by Houthi rebel fighters, who overrun Yemen’s capital Sanaa in 2014 and forced the Saudi-backed president, Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi, to flee into exile in Saudi Arabia.
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