42 Killed in Attack by Helicopter and Military Vessel on Somali Refugee Boat

Reports from the United Nations and Yemeni sources indicate that at least 42 people were killed during an attack by an Apache helicopter and a military vessel on a boat carrying Somali refugees who held UN documents. According to news agencies, this attack occurred at midnight on Friday, March 17, near the Bab al-Mandab Strait. Houthi rebels, who control large parts of Yemen, have accused the Saudi-led Arab coalition of being involved in this attack. In recent days, Saudi Arabia has heavily bombarded the coasts near the Yemeni port of Al-Hudaydah, accusing Houthi rebels of using small boats to smuggle weapons. According to the Associated Press, a Yemeni smuggler who survived the attack stated that the boat was filled with Somali refugees, including women and children, who intended to flee from Yemen to Sudan. Hassan Ghaleb Mohammed told the news agency that this boat had departed from the southern province of Al-Hudaydah and was targeted by a military vessel and a helicopter about 50 kilometers off the coast towards the Bab al-Mandab Strait. He described the scene of terror on the boat, where refugees had turned on flashlights to signal that they were poor refugees, stating that the helicopter then stopped firing but only after several had been killed. A senior official from the UN Refugee Agency reported that 42 bodies had been retrieved from the water. Mohammed Abdiker, the emergency director at the International Organization for Migration in Geneva, stated that the attack, which occurred around 3 a.m. on Friday, was 'completely unacceptable' and that the responsible fighters should have checked who was on the boat before firing. He added, 'About 75 men and 15 women who survived the attack have been transferred to migrant camps, and some of the bodies, due to lack of space in the morgue, have been placed in the fish market of Al-Hudaydah city.' An official from this agency in Yemen also mentioned that all those on the boat had been registered as refugees. The Houthis claimed that a day earlier, they had shot down a helicopter in the same area. They added that the Arab coalition had conducted a series of airstrikes in southern Al-Hudaydah over the past 48 hours, during which a fishing boat was targeted by a helicopter, resulting in several deaths. The Saudi-led Arab coalition, supported by the United States, has been conducting ground and air attacks against the positions of the Shiite Houthi rebels and their allies since March 2015, hoping to drive the Houthis out of Sana'a, the capital of Yemen, and restore the UN-backed government. The war in Yemen has so far resulted in over 10,000 deaths and has brought the country to the brink of famine. In another development, a missile attack by Houthi rebels on a base of forces loyal to President Mansur Hadi in eastern Sana'a on Friday resulted in at least 26 deaths. This attack occurred in the Marib province using Iranian-made Zelzal missiles and Katyusha rockets.