The International Organization for Migration (IOM) has confirmed the death of 11 Ethiopian migrants who perished in an accident in the Somali city of Bosaso.
The IOM, in a statement on Saturday, said the accident that occurred in the evening hours of Tuesday, March 28, also saw 20 migrants sustaining several degrees of injuries.
The migrants, according to the UN agency, were being transported by human smugglers, and were heading to Bosaso with the intention of crossing the Gulf of Aden to Yemen, when their truck overturned, causing the fatalities and injuries.
“Local communities brought out eleven corpses and the seriously injured migrants were transported to Bosaso General Hospital, which is now treating patients beyond its capacity,” the IOM said, adding that its staff had mobilized available resources to support the hospital to provide treatment to the victims.
“We sent most of the medical supplies we had in stock at the Migrant Response Centre (MRC) in Bosaso and our teams are providing physiological support to those injured,” Frantz Celestin, IOM Somalia Chief of Mission said.
“IOM calls for safer and more legal pathways for people in the Horn of Africa to migrate regularly. Populations have suffered from decades of shocks and need more options to sustain their livelihoods and access opportunities,” Celestin added.
The IOM chief went on to reveal that the agency’s Missing Migrants Project had documented the deaths and disappearances of more than 1,100 people travelling from Eastern Africa to Yemen and Saudi Arabia on the Eastern Route since 2019, including the latest incident.
“The number of confirmed deaths documented by IOM are almost certainly an undercount: a 2021 survey of households in Ethiopia identified more than 50,000 people reported missing by families after they left their home country since 2015 alone, but security and funding constraints mean that many deaths go unrecorded.
“The Eastern Route is the major migratory route out of the Horn of Africa via Somalia or Djibouti to Yemen and often onwards to Saudi Arabia, mostly taken by Ethiopians and Somalis fleeing precarious economic situations, conflict and climate events such as the current drought.
“Migrants taking the eastern route face serious risks, including extortion, detention, kidnapping, modern slavery, and physical abuse.
“Rape, deaths, and killings at the hands of smugglers and at times by authorities are also a reality in what is arguably considered one of the most dangerous migratory routes on earth.”