News Center – A boat carrying 154 migrants capsized off the coast of Yemen on Sunday due to bad weather, killing at least 68 migrants and leaving many more missing, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) said on Monday.

The vessel, with 154 Ethiopian migrants on board, sank in the Gulf of Aden off the southern Yemeni province of Abyan early Sunday, Abdusattor Esoev, head of the International Organization for Migration in Yemen told The Associated Press.

He said the bodies of 54 migrants washed ashore in the district of Khanfar, 14 others were found dead and taken to a hospital morgue in Zinjibar, the provincial capital of Abyan on Yemen’s southern coast and only 12 migrants survived the shipwreck, and the rest were missing and presumed dead.

Yemen is a major route for migrants from East Africa and the Horn of Africa trying to reach the Gulf Arab countries for work. Thousands— mainly from Ethiopia and Somalia — are taken by smugglers on overcrowded boats across the Red Sea or Gulf of Aden.

Hundreds of migrants have died or gone missing in shipwrecks off Yemen in recent months. In March, two migrants died and 186 others were missing after four boats capsized off Yemen and Djibouti, according to the IOM.

Yemen has long served as a dangerous but frequently used transit route for migrants from the Horn of Africa attempting to reach Gulf states. Thousands  risk the journey each year in search of safety and opportunity.

3,400 deaths in the last decade

In the last decade, the IOM's Missing Migrants Project recorded more than 3,400 deaths and missing people along the route, 1,400 of those deaths were due to drowning.