Some 190 desperate people are on the verge of perishing at sea, adrift somewhere between the Andaman Sea and the Bay of Bengal, the UN refugee agency, UNHCR, said on Friday, urging countries in southern Asia to rescue them.
UN refugee agency, UNHCR, on Friday, issued an alert over the dramatic increase in the number of people attempting to cross the Andaman Sea, from Bangladesh and Myanmar.
A sharp increase in the deaths and disappearances of migrants at sea heading to Spain’s Canary Islands, along the West African coast, is a cause for “extreme concern” the UN’s migration agency, IOM, said on Friday.
During 2016, more than 117,000 refugees arrived in war-stricken Yemen, according to the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), despite the escalating conflict there.
Many were lured by smugglers to take a perilous boat journey from Africa across the Gulf of Aden, or the Red Sea, in search of a better future.
UN figures released on Wednesday show that an estimated 17 million people in Yemen are going hungry and more than 2 million have been displaced.